Selected Thoughts from the Following Works of . . .
Paulo Freire 1921 – 1997
Compiled and edited by Dr. Nancy Jean Smith
California State University, Stanislaus
(1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum, ISBN 0-8264-0611-4
(1974). Education for critical consciousness. Continuum, ISBN 0-8264-7795-X
(1987). Literacy; Reading the word and the world. Bergin & Gavey, ISBN 0-89789-126-0
(1989). Learning to question; A pedagogy of liberation. Continuum, ISBN 0-8264-0509-6
(1998). Pedagogy of freedom; Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Rowman & Littlefield,
ISBN 0-8476-9047-4
(2004). Pedgagoy of indignation. Paradigm, ISBN 1-59451-051-2
To the oppressed,
And to those who suffer with them
And fight at their side
Preface to Pedagogy of the Oppressed
These pages, which introduce Pedagogy of the Oppressed, result from my observations
during six years of political exile, observations which have enriched those previously afforded
by my educational activities in Brazil.
I have encountered, both in training courses which analyze the role of Conscentization
(learning to perceive social, political and economic contradiction, and to take action against
the oppressive elements of reality) and in actual experimentation with a truly liberating
education, the “fear of freedom” discussed in this book. Not infrequently, training course
participants call attention to “the danger of conscentization” in a way that reveals their own
fear of freedom. Critical consciousness may lead to disorder. Some, however, confess: Why
deny it? I was afraid of freedom. I am no longer afraid!
In one of these discussions, the group was debating whether the conscentization of
humans to a specific situation of injustice might not lead them to “destructive fanaticism” or to
a “sensation of total collapse of their world.” In the midst of the argument, a person who
previously had been a factory worker for many years spoke out: “Perhaps I am the only one
here of working-class origin. I can’t say that I’ve understood everything you’ve said just now,
but I can say one thing – when I began this course I was naïve, and when I found out how
naïve I was, I started to get critical. But his discovery hasn’t made me a fanatic, and I don’t feel
any collapse either.”
Doubt regarding the possible effects of conscentization implies a premise which the
doubter does not always make explicit: It is better for the victims of injustice not to recognize
themselves as such. In fact, however, conscentization does not lead people to “destructive
fanaticism.” On the contrary, by making it possible for people to enter the historical process as
responsible Subjects (those who know and act, in contrast to objects, which are known and
acted upon), conscentization enrolls them in the search for self-affirmation and thus avoids
fanaticism.
The awakening of critical consciousness leads the way to the expression of
social discontents precisely because these discontents are real components
of an oppressive situation. (Francisco Weffort, 1967)
Fear of freedom, of which its possessor is not necessarily aware, makes her/him see
ghosts. Such an individual is actually taking refuge in an attempt to achieve security, which
he or she prefers to the risks of liberty. As Hegel (1967) testifies:
It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained . . . the individual who
has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person,
but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an
independent self-consciousness.
Men and women rarely admit their fear of freedom openly, however, tending rather to
camouflage it – sometimes unconsciously – by presenting themselves as defenders of freedom.
They give their doubts and misgivings an air of profound sobriety, as befitting custodians of
freedom. But they confuse freedom with the maintenance of the status quo; so that if
conscentization threatens to place that status quo in question, it thereby seems to constitute a
threat to freedom itself.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed will probably arouse negative reactions in a number of
readers. Some will regard my position vis-à-vis the problem of human liberation as purely
idealistic, or may even consider discussion of Ontological (the metaphysical study of the nature
of being and existence) vocation, love, dialogue, hope, humility, and sympathy as so much
reactionary “blah.” Others will not (or will not wish to) accept my denunciation of a state of
oppression that gratifies the oppressors. Sectarianism (bigoted, narrow minded following of
doctrine), fed by fanaticism, is always castrating. Radicalization, nourished by a critical spirit,
is always creative. Sectarianism mythicizes and thereby alienates; radicalization criticizes and
thereby liberates. Radicalization involves increased commitment to the position one has
chosen, and thus ever greater engagement in the effort to transform concrete, objective reality.
Sectarianism in any quarter is an obstacle to the emancipation of mankind.
The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a “circle of
certainty” within which reality is also imprisoned. On the contrary, the more radical the
person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can
better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world
unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them. This
person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the
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liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight
at their side.
From these pages I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and
my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love.
The following are some keys to Freirian Thought . . .
which build a conceptual framework towards Critical Consciousness . . .
or the Praxis of the Concientization Process . . .
HUMANIZATION / DEHUMANIZATION
The problem of humanization has always been humankind’s central problem. Concern for
humanization leads to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an Ontological (the
metaphysical study of the nature of being and existence) possibility but as an historical
reality. As an individual perceives the extent of dehumanization, he or she may ask if
humanization is a viable possibility. But while both Humanization and dehumanization are
real alternatives, only the first is the people’s vocation. It is thwarted by injustice, exploitation,
oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed
for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity.
Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also
those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human. This
distortion occurs within history; but to admit of dehumanization as an historical vocation
would lead either to cynicism or total despair. The struggle for humanization, for the
emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women
as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization,
although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that
engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed. Because it is
a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed
to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the
oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become
in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.
This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed; to liberate
themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by
virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or
themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently
strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the
weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity;
indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to
express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social
order is the permanent fount of their “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and
poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest
threat to its source.
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True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false
charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their
trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands – whether of individuals
or entire people – need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they
become human hands which work and working transform the world. This lesson and this
apprenticeship must come, however, from the oppressed themselves and from those who are
truly in solidarity with them. As individuals or as peoples, by fighting for the restoration of
their humanity they will be attempting the restoration of true generosity. Who are better
prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society?
Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the
necessity of liberation? They will not gain this liberation by chance but through the Praxis (the
dialectic of action and reflection . . . word + work = praxis) of their quest for it, through their
recognition of the necessity to fight for it. And this fight, because of the purpose given it by
the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the
heart of the oppressors’ violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity.
INTERNALIZED IMAGE OF THE OPPRESSOR
Almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of
striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.” The very
structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete,
existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be human; but for them, to
be human is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives
from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an
attitude of “adhesion” to the oppressor. Under these circumstances they cannot “consider”
him or her clearly to objectivize – to discover a being “outside” themselves. This does not
necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden. But their
perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of
oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not
yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the Contradiction (dialectical conflict
between opposing social forces).
At a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible
attraction towards the oppressors and their way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an
overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the
oppressors, to imitate them, to follow them. Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the
oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the opinion the oppressor hold of them.
So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, that they become convinced that they are
undesirable. They call themselves ignorant and say the “professor” is the one who has
knowledge and to whom they should listen. Almost never do they realize that they too,
“know things” they have learned in their relations with the world and with other humans.
Given the ambiguity forced on them, it is only natural that they distrust themselves. They have
a diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor. As they remain
unaware of the causes of their condition, they fatalistically “accept” exploitation.
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Within their unauthentic view of the world and of themselves, the oppressed feel like
“things” owned. For the oppressor, to be is to have. For the oppressed to be is to be under the
oppressor, to be emotionally dependent. This emotional dependence can lead the oppressed
to what Fromm calls Necrophilic Behavior (Internalized Oppression; the destruction of life –
their own or that of their oppressed fellows). When the oppressed become involved in an
organized struggle for their liberation, they begin to believe in themselves. Seeing examples of
the vulnerability of the oppressor allows a contrary conviction to grow within them. This
discovery cannot be purely intellectual but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere
activism, but must include serious reflection; only then will it be praxis.
It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The
oppressor, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. It is therefore
essential that the oppressed wage the struggle to resolve the contradiction in which they are
caught. For the oppressed to become more fully human, they cannot merely change poles.
Resolution of the contradiction implies the disappearance of the dominant class. Even when
the contradiction is resolved authentically, the oppressors do not feel liberated. On the
contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. This is sometimes named as
Reverse Discrimination, which in reality does not exist. It is also called Positivism.
Conditioned by their experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former
seems to them like oppression. Any restriction on their way of life, in the name of the rights of
the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual
rights. “Human beings” refers only to them selves, other people are “things”. For the
oppressors, there exists only one right; their right to live in peace, over against the right, not
always even recognized, but simply conceded, of the oppressed to survival. They make this
concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence.
THE RIGHT AND DUTY TO CHANGE THE WORLD
It is certain that men and women can change the world for the better, can make it less
unjust, but they can do so only from the starting point of the concrete reality they “come
upon” in their generation. Transformation requires dreaming, but the indispensable
authenticity of that dream depends on the faithfulness of those who dream to their historic
and materials circumstances and to the levels of technological scientific development of their
context. Dreams are visions for which one fights. Their realization cannot take place easily,
without obstacles. It implies advances, reversals, lengthy marches. It implies struggle.
Transformation is a political act.
The time a generation belongs to, since it is historic, reveals old marks involving
understandings of reality, special interests, class interests, prejudices, and the gestation of
ideologies that have been perpetuated with contradictions. The nature of all reality is
contradictor and process-oriented. To the extent that we accept that the economy, or
technology, or science, it doesn’t matter what, exerts inescapable power over us, there is
nothing left for us to do other than renounce our ability to think, to conjecture, to compare, to
choose, to decide, to envision, to dream. Our presence in the world becomes devoid of any
ethics. The very fact that human beings have become equipped to recognize how conditioned
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or influenced they are by economic structures also makes them capable of intervening in the
conditioning reality. Knowing oneself to be conditioned but not fatalistically subjected to this
or that destiny opens up the way for one’s intervention in the world. The opposite of
intervention is adaptation, is to settle or adapt to a reality that is not questioned.
The future does not make us. We make ourselves in the struggle to make it. While
conditioned by economic structures, I am not determined by them. Therein lies the duty, to
never, under any circumstance, accept or encourage fatalistic positions, rather to reject
fatalism, and encourage critical curiosity and seek the reasons or reasons for the facts.
Essential elements of change: consistency between words and actions; boldness which
urges the confrontation of existence as a permanent risk; radicalization, as opposed to Sectarian
(bigoted, narrow minded following of doctrine) leading to increasing action; courage to love
which far from being accommodation to an unjust world, is rather the transformation of that
world in behalf of the increasing liberation of mankind; and faith in the people.
Leaders will always run the risk of not winning the immediate adherence of the people.
The people are manipulated by a series of myths. When the people begin to emerge from the
historical process they begin to threaten the elites. The presence of the people, not longer as
spectators, rather with some aggressiveness, is sufficiently disquieting to frighten the
dominant elites into doubling the tactics of manipulation, a fundamental instrument for the
preservation of domination. Manipulation anesthetizes the people and facilitates their
domination.
The commitment of revolutionary leaders to the oppressed is at the same time a
commitment to freedom. Organizing for freedom means leaders organizing themselves with
the people, practicing freedom. Organizing the people is the process in which the
revolutionary leaders, who are also prevented from saying their own word, initiate the
experience of learning how to name the world. This is true learning experience, and therefore
dialogical. So it is that the leaders cannot say their own word alone; they must say it with the
people. Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not
organize the people – they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated; they
oppress. Leaders must not confuse authoritarianism and authority. There is no freedom
without authority, but there is also no authority without freedom. Freedom and authority
must be considered in relationship to each other. Authentic authority is not a mere transfer of
power, but a delegation of sympathetic adherence, a process, which seeks to transform reality.
THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE / READING THE WORLD
The discourse on the impossibility of changing the world is of those who have accepted
the status quo, either from despair or because they benefit from it. The ability to resist is
lacking or weak in those who settle for what is. It is easier to cozy up to the tepidness of
impossibility, rather than to embrace the permanent and uneven struggle for justice and ethics.
It is important, however, to emphasize that there is a fundamental difference between
those who settle into hopelessness, subjected as they have been to the asphyxia of necessity that
precludes the adventure of freedom and the struggle for it, and those who find in the discourse
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of settling an effective instrument to block change. The former are the oppressed without
horizons the latter are the penitent oppressors.
The constant exercise of “reading the world,” requiring as it does a critical
understanding of reality, involves denouncing it and, at the same time, heralding that which
does not yet exist. Reading the world can lead beyond conjecture per se to a vision for the
world. Critically reading the world is a political-pedagogical doing; it is inseparable from the
pedagogical-political, from political action that involves the organization of groups and the
reinventing of society. Denouncing and announcing, when part of the process of critically
reading the world, give birth to the dream for which one fights. This dream or vision, whose
profile becomes clear in the process of critically analyzing the reality one denounces, is a
practice that transforms society. Tomorrow is not a tomorrow given ahead of time. I must
fight to have it, but I must also have a drawing of it as I struggle to build it.
I will never forget the comments made by a literacy student in Natal, Rio Grade do
Norte, in 1963, during discussions in a cultural circle. This topic was the importance of the
tasks we must complete as men and women in history. “I see now,” he said, “that my trade,
fixing shoes, is also very valuable. Through my work, I can give back to someone who brings
me an old shoe. I protect the feet of the people while helping them spend less than if they had
to buy new shoes. I must fight for the dignity of my work and not be ashamed of it. That man
was “rereading” the world, and as he did, he came to realize something he had not
apprehended in his previous reading the world. The rereading in which he engaged recreated his sense of self worth, one no longer developed from the standpoint of the dominant
ideology, which undermines the work of the under trodden and intensifies their subordination
to the ruling power. He was becoming literate in the broad and deep sense of the word. He
was taking responsibility for himself as a man with a task.
To the extent that we become capable of transforming the world, of naming our own
surroundings, of apprehending, of making sense of things, of deciding, of choosing, of
valuing, and finally of ethicizing the world, our mobility within it and through history
necessarily come to involve dreams toward whose realization we struggle. Thus, it follows
that our presence in the world, which implies choice and decision, is not a neutral presence.
The ability to observe, to compare and to evaluate, in order to choose, through deciding, how
one is to intervene determines our collective possibilities.
Awareness of the world and awareness of oneself is critical not only as a being in the
world, but one with the world and with others, a being capable of intervening in the world and
not only of adapting to it. It is in this sense that women and men can interfere in the world
while other animals can only touch it. That is why not only do we have a history, but we make
our history, which equally makes us, and thus makes us historic.
Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies
continually reading the world. Reading the word is not preceded merely by reading the
world, but by a certain form of writing it, or rewriting it, of transforming it by means of
conscious, practical work. Work laden with the meaning of the people’s existential experience.
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THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED / “CULTURAL SYNTHESIS”
Cultural action is always a systematic and deliberate form of action, which operates
upon the social structure, either with the objective of preserving that structure or of
transforming it. Cultural action either serves domination (consciously or unconsciously) or it
serves the liberation of men and women, it creates dialectical relations of permanence and
change. The social structure, in order to be, must become.
The actors draw the thematic content of their action from their own values and
ideology; their starting point is their own world, from which they enter the world. In cultural
synthesis, the actors come from “another world” to the world of the people, not as invaders,
not as teachers or to transmit or give anything, but rather to learn, with the people, about the
people’s world.
In cultural synthesis the actors become integrated with the people, who are co-authors
of the action that both perform upon the world. In cultural invasion, both the spectators and
the reality to be preserved are objects of the actor’s action. In cultural synthesis, there are no
spectators; the object of the actors’ action is the reality to be transformed for human liberation.
Cultural synthesis is thus a mode for confronting culture itself. The investigation of the
people’s generative themes constitutes the starting point for the process of action. There are
no imposed models, only actors who critically analyze reality, never separating this analysis
from action, and who intervene as Subjects in the historical process.
Leaders and people together create the guidelines of their action, and are reborn in new
knowledge and new action. Knowledge of the alienated culture leads to transforming action.
The more sophisticated knowledge of the leaders is remade in the empirical knowledge of the
people, and vise versa. Only in cultural synthesis is it possible to resolve the contradiction
between the world view of the leaders and that of the people, and affirms the support each
gives to the other.
Revolutionary leaders must avoid organizing themselves apart from the people.
Whatever contradictions occur, they must be solved. Leaders commit many errors and
miscalculations by not taking into account the people’s view of the world; a view which
explicitly and implicitly contains their concerns, their doubts, their hopes, their way of seeing
the leaders, their perceptions of themselves and of the oppressors, their religious beliefs, their
fatalism, their rebellious reactions. The knowledge of this totality is indispensable to action.
This does not mean that the objectives of revolutionary action should be limited by the
aspirations expressed in the worldview of the people. The solution lies in synthesis; leaders
must on the one hand identify with the people’s vision, while on the other they pose the vision
as a problem. To achieve critical consciousness is to go beyond palliative solutions; it is to
engage in authentic transformation of reality in order, by humanizing that reality, to humanize
women and men.
In the anti dialogical theory of action, cultural invasion serves the ends of manipulation,
which in turn serves the ends of conquest, and conquest the ends of domination. Cultural
synthesis serves the ends of organization; organization serves the ends of liberation. Just as
the oppressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive action, so the oppressed, in
order to become free, also need a theory of action.
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The oppressor elaborates his theory of action without the people, for he stands against
them. Nor can the people – as long as they are crushed and oppressed, internalizing the image
of the oppressor- construct by themselves the theory of their liberating action. Only in the
encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders – in their communion, in their praxis –
can this theory be built.
VOICE / CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
Education makes sense because the world is not necessarily this or that, because human
beings are as much projects, or a vision, for the world. Education makes sense because women
and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves as beings capable
of knowing – of knowing that they know and of knowing that they don’t. They are able to
know what they already know better and to come to know what they do not yet know.
Education makes sense because in order to be, women and men must keep on being. If
women and men simply were, there would be no reason to speak of education.
The capable and serious progressive educator must, not only teach his or her discipline
well, but he or she must also challenge the learner to critically think through the social,
political, and historic reality within which he or she is a presence.
The teacher who learns to speak by listening is interrupted by the intermittent silence of
his or her own capacity to listen, waiting for that voice that may desire to speak from the
depths of its own silent listening. The importance of silence in the context of communication is
fundamental. Silence makes it possible for the speaker to hear the question, the doubt, the
person who is listening. Without silence, communication withers.
In the process of speaking and listening, the discipline of silence, which needs to be
developed with serious intent, is an indispensable condition of dialogical communication. The
person who knows how to listen demonstrates this, by being able to control the urge to speak
(which is right). Those who have something to say should know that they are not the only
ones with ideas and opinions that need to be expressed. They should be conscious that, no
matter how important the issue, their opinion probably will not be the one truth. They should
also be aware that the person listening also has something to say.
In my relations with others, those who may not have had the same experiences as
myself or have not made the same political, ethical, aesthetic or pedagogical choices as myself,
I cannot begin from the standpoint that I have to conquer them at any cost or from the fear that
they may conquer me. On the contrary, the basis of our encounter ought to be a respect for the
differences between us, and an acknowledgement of the coherence between what I say and
what I do. It is in openness to the world that I construct the inner security that is indispensable
for that openness. It is impossible to live this openness to the world without inner security,
just as it is impossible to have that security without taking the risk of being open.
How can one fight when courage, will and rebelliousness are lacking, when one does
not have a tomorrow, when one lacks hope? For this reason, all liberating educational practice –
which values the exercise of will, of decision, of resistance, of limits, the importance of historic
awareness, of an ethical human presence in the world, and the understanding of history as
possibility and never as determination – produces hope.
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The exercise of thinking time, of thinking technique, and of thinking knowledge
through as it is discovered; the exercise of thinking through the what of things, their what of,
how, in whose favor, and against what or whom they are – this is a fundamental requirement
of a critical education that can live up to the challenges of our time. Education never was, is
not and never can be neutral or indifferent in regard to the reproduction of the dominant
ideology or the interrogation of it.
As Sartre says, “Educators who refuse to transform the ugliness of human misery, social
injustices, and inequalities, invariably become educators for Domestication, (the taming,
enslaving of the mind for the servitude of the master) who will change nothing and will
serve no one, but will succeed only in finding moral comfort in malaise.” Breaking the
invisible hegemonic power of alienating domestication is an essential task in critical pedagogy.
DEMOCRACY
One of my dreams is to challenge ourselves to reflect upon the role we play and the
responsibility we have to take on the construction and betterment of democracy among us. I
do not speak of a democracy that deepens inequities, that is purely conventional, that
strengthens the powerful, that watches with crossed arms as the small are outraged and
mistreated, one that coddles impunity. I do not speak of a democracy whose dream for the
state is for a liberal state that maximizes the freedom of the strong to accumulate capital even if
that means poverty, at times total destitution, for the majority.
I dream of a democracy whose state, while refusing permissive or authoritarian
positions and indeed respecting the freedom of its citizens, does not abdicate its role as
regulator of social relations. This is a state that intervenes, for it is responsible for the
development of social solidarity. We need a democracy that, while loyal to human nature
which makes us capable of both creating an ethical world and committing ethical
transgressions, is able to set limits to men and women’s capacity for ill will.
What seems impossible to me:
√ to accept a democracy founded in the ethics of the market, solely aroused by profit.
√ to accept a democracy where there is no path for fragile economies other than
patiently settling for the control and the dictums of globalizing power.
√ to remain silent before this postmodern expression of authoritarianism.
Words should be laden with meaning of the people’s existential
experience. They should come from the “word universe” of people who are
learning, expressing their actual language, their anxieties, fears, demands, and
dreams. The people’s words, pregnant with the world, become words from the
people’s reading of the world. We then create, recreate, take back, give the
words back to the people inserted in “codifications”, not slogans or
domesticating, nationalizing symbols, but pictures representing real situations.
In this way, a critical reading, voicing and rethinking the word constitutes an
instrument of counter Hegemony. (predominance, privilege, power, supremacy,
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superiority or dominion of influence by birthright, legislation, class, language,
etc. as of a state, region or group over another or others.
Each time that in one way or another, the question of language comes to
the fore, that signifies that a series of other problems is about to emerge,
the formation and enlarging of the ruling class, the necessity to establish
more “intimate” and sure relations between the ruling groups and the
national popular masses, that is the reorganization of cultural hegemony.
Antonio Gramsci, 1982.
It is not possible to educate for democracy, or to experience it, without the critical exercise of
recognizing the real meaning of words, actions, proposals, visions, without questioning. This
is the task of men and women who not only speak of democracy, but also live it, who make an
effort humbly so, to narrow the distance between what we say and what we do. We must
speak about a better world, one less unjust, more human, more democratic.
SOLIDARITY AND LEADERSHIP
Explanation of Critical Consciousness Chart
Revolutionary leaders must follow the path of dialogue, dialogic action and of
communication. Usually this group is made up of men and women who in one way or
another have belonged to the social strata of the dominators. At a certain point in their
existential experience, under certain historical conditions, these leaders renounce the class to
which they belong and join the oppressed, in an act of true solidarity (or so one would hope)
an act of love and true commitment. Joining the oppressed requires going to them and
communicating with them. The people must find themselves in the emerging leaders, and the
latter must find themselves in the people.
At times the oppressor is “housed” within the people, and their resulting ambiguity
makes them fearful of freedom. They resort (stimulated by the oppressor) to magical
explanations or a false view of God, to whom they fatalistically transfer the responsibility for
their oppressed state. “What can I do? It is the will of God that we live in indescribable
poverty.” It is extremely unlikely that these self-mistrustful, downtrodden, hopeless people
will seek their own liberation – an act of rebellion, which they may view as a disobedient
violation of the will of God. Hence the necessity of Problematizing (posing problems as
questions), the myths fed to the people by the oppressors.
When the people have reached a relatively clear picture of oppression, which leads
them to localize the oppressor outside themselves, they take up the struggle to surmount the
contradiction in which they are caught. At this moment they overcome the distance between
“class necessity” and “class consciousness”. A spirit of struggle, courage, capacity for love, or
daring is required of the revolutionary leaders. It requires bravery on the part of the leaders to
love the people sufficiently to be willing to sacrifice themselves for them. It requires courage
by the leaders to recommence after each disaster.
Dr. Nancy Jean Smith, California State University, Stanislaus
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Thus, due to certain historical conditions, the movement by the revolutionary leaders to
the people is either horizontal – so that leaders and people form one body in contradiction to
the oppressor – or it is triangular, with the revolutionary leaders occupying the vertex of the
triangle in contradiction to the oppressors and to the oppressed as well. This is forced on the
leaders when the people have not yet achieved a critical perception of oppressive reality.
Sometimes leaders interpret a certain historical moment of the people’s consciousness
as evidence of their intrinsic deficiency. Since leaders need the adherence of the people, they
are tempted to utilize the same procedures used by dominant elites to oppress. Rationalizing
their lack of confidence in the people, the leaders say that it is impossible to dialogue with the
people, i.e. Dominated Consciousness (ambiguous, full of fear and mistrust manifested in
inefficiency, Erich Fromm, “The Application of Humanist Psychoanalysis to Marxist Theory,”
in Socialist Humanism).
The role of leadership is to consider seriously, even as they act, the reasons for any
attitude of mistrust on the part of the people, and to seek out true avenues of communion with
them, ways of helping the people to help them selves critically perceive the reality which
oppresses them.
Leaders must dedicate themselves to an untiring effort for unity among the oppressed –
and unity of the leaders with the oppressed – in order to achieve liberation. The praxis of
oppression is not easy for revolutionary leaders to carry out. Oppressors can rely on using
instruments of power to preserve the state of oppression, can unite rapidly in the face of any
threat to its fundamental interests. But revolutionary leaders cannot exist without the people,
and this very condition constitutes the first obstacle to its efforts at organization.
THEORY OF DIALOGICAL CULTURAL ACTION
Traveller,
there is no path,
we make the path,
by walking.
Antonio Machado
This theory involves a subject who conquers another person and transforms her to him
into a “thing”. In the dialogical theory of action, subjects meet in cooperation in order to
transform the world. The anti dialogical, dominating I transforms the dominated, conquered
thou into a mere it. The dialogical I, however, knows that it is precisely the thou which has
called forth his or her own existence. He also knows that the thou which calls forth his own
existence in turn constitutes an I which has in his I its thou. The I and the thou thus become, in
the dialectic of these relationships, two thous which become two I’s. (I see you and through
seeing you see myself). These Subjects meet to name the world in order to transform it.
Cooperation occurs only among Subjects and can only be achieved through
communication. Dialogue, as essential communication, must underlie any cooperation.
Dialogue does not impose, does not manipulate, does not domesticate. Dialogue means a
relationship with the people, is does not mean leaders own the people and have to right to
steer the people blindly towards their salvation. Such a salvation would be a mere gift from
Dr. Nancy Jean Smith, California State University, Stanislaus
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the leaders to the people – a breaking of the dialogical bond, reducing the people from coauthors of liberating action into the objects of this action.
Dialogical theory requires that the world be unveiled. No one can, however, unveil the
world for another. Although one Subject may initiate the unveiling on behalf of others, the
others must also become Subjects of this act. The adherence of the people is made possible by
this unveiling of the world and of themselves, in authentic praxis. This adherence coincides
with the trust the people begin to place in themselves and in the revolutionary leaders. The
trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.
This confidence should not, however be naive. The leaders must believe in the
potentialities of the people, whom they cannot treat as mere objects of their own action; they
must believe that the people are capable of participating in the pursuit of liberation. But they
must always mistrust the ambiguity of oppressed people, mistrust the oppressor “housed” in
them. The leader must be a realist.
Although trust is basic to dialogue, it is not an a priori condition. It results from the
encounter in which persons are co-Subjects in denouncing the world, as part of the world’s
transformation. As long as the oppressor “within” the oppressed is stronger than they
themselves are, their natural fear of freedom may lead them to denounce the revolutionary
leaders instead!
It is humility and the capacity to love that makes communion with the people possible,
a path to cooperation. Communion with the people should cease to be a mere theory, it
should become an integral part of oneself. In dialogic theory, at no stage can revolutionary
action forgo communion with the people. Communion in turn elicits cooperation which brings
leaders and people to fusion. This fusion can exist only if revolutionary action is really human,
empathetic, loving, communicative and humble, in order to be liberating. The revolution loves
and creates life; and in order to create life it may be obliged to prevent some men from
circumscribing life. In addition to the life-death cycle basic to nature, there is almost an
unnatural living death: life which is denied its fullness.
Thank you Paulo . . . for your life, and your word. We can together study, reflect and act to
make a better world. You smile upon us and remind us of the deep rivers we need to
continue to work.
Nancy Jean
Dr. Nancy Jean Smith, California State University, Stanislaus
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