Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0209161645090.5506-100000@panix1.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (fwd)
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 16:45:27 -0400 (EDT)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 14:01:43 EDT From: JBCM2@aol.com I am posting this here b/c Freire was, after all, THE educator and theorist of the "critical interventions" in recent times. Certainly, it is hard to theorize what BlogLeft is doing without an understanding of Freire's work, alongside members of the Frankfurt school, the Birmingham Cultural Studies group and others: > While the problem of humanization has always, from an axiological point of > view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on the character of an > inescapable concern. -- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed [1] I. Introduction: As a radical pedagogy and defense of the Third World, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed remains as timely as ever. Rooted in “real and concrete hunger” experiences and informed by a critical understanding of transnational social structure and power, since its appearance in English in 1970, Freire's great text has run alongside (and mostly counter to) the globalization of technocapital and its resulting cycle of mass extinction and planetary oppression. I'll not bother now to further extol its many praises, of which the book is certainly worthy. Rather, in the manner of praxis -- which moves dialectically from an analysis of a concrete situation to an understanding of the concrete's relation to abstract knowledge and then back again towards a transformation of the particular situation at hand -- I would like to begin by analyzing the fact of our present ecological crisis with the intention of then critically relating it to Freire's own theory as expressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I hope thereby to provide both greater illumination of the limits of our own situation and of the pedagogy proper, with the paper itself guided by the belief that opportunities must be constructed for future interventions and alliance-building between those struggling against global eco-cide and Freirean educators. When Freire's work is engaged by the reality of the current ecological crisis, it provides immediate historical insight as to why the people of the Third World, along with other species of the Earth, have been consistently denied the rights and privileges accorded those living amidst the advanced capitalist nations -- there is a logic of domination at work. As Freire theorizes, it has always been the mindset of the oppressors to see themselves as “human,” while those that they prey upon are always less than such; like animals, they are barred from the prospects of history and the possibilities inherent in liberatory conduct. [2] Therefore, it is of little surprise that people in the Third World and species everywhere currently bear the great burdens of “sustainable development,” uttered by the global oppressors as a cure-all for all those already suffering from the previous legacy of development and imposed transformation of their lifeworlds. According to Freire's own thinking, we who stand with the global oppressed should then be especially dubious, if not in outright objection, of such top-down policy initiatives as proposed by global states and federations -- policies that are formed by those who live in great opulence and ease but which are always directed at those surrounded by despair. Duly informed by the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we might suggest that in contradistinction to the many terrors now foisted by states and state-minded organizations upon the world, we need not globalization-from-above, but globalization-from-below. [3] The idea of mixing a thorough-going critique of power with a sort of Gramscian-inspired, counter-hegemonic alliance politics is certainly not new within the Freirean legacy. I think it is fair to point to movements as diverse as Critical Pedagogy, the Poststructural-Marxism promoted by Laclau and Mouffe, recent forms of Revolutionary Multiculturalism and to Borderland Feminism as promoting a sort of Freireanism fit for today's anti-globalization set. Yet, as bell hooks herself testifies, this updating of Freire's work was often achieved only with great anguish. Only after concerted effort were feminist, post-colonial, and multicultural criticisms of Pedagogy of the Oppressed allowed to stand and be heard within the Freirean corpus. [4] Now, as we stand smack dab in the middle of a planetary eco-crisis, a catastrophe in which global powers will destroy the peoples and cultures of the Third World along with the species and habitats of their regions, I would like to ask: Is Freire's work in a position to mediate and speak with both those who stand beside the global poor and destitute and those whose deepest commitment is to the entirety of the natural kingdom? Can the Freirean corpus itself find agreement with the multi-faceted movement for eco-justice? <A HREF="http://getvegan.com/ecofreire.htm">Click here for the paper in its entirety</A>...This is a piece that I have just finished for the 3rd Annual International Symposium of Freire's work at UCLA from 9/18-9/21, 2002. They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose. "America is a quarter of a billion people totally misinformed and disinformed by their government. This is tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even say corrupt -- it's just beyond telling us anything that the government doesn't want us to know." Gore Vidal