{"id":363,"date":"2019-10-20T20:37:37","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T00:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/?p=363"},"modified":"2019-10-29T11:36:49","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T15:36:49","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-critique-4-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-critique-4-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Introduction to Critique 4\/13 (English version)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt<\/strong><\/p>\n

At a time when Paulo Freire\u2019s ideas and pedagogy are under attack, especially in his native country of Brazil, it is particularly important to return to his writings, not only to discover new critical moves to deploy in our own contemporary political struggles\u2014in effect, to engage in the kind of critical reading proposed in Critique 13\/13<\/a>\u2014but also to underscore what makes Freire\u2019s work so threatening today. It is, perhaps, a sure sign of a successful critical theory that it is vilified and held responsible for destabilizing the social order. Freire himself understood this well, and described the likely \u201cnegative reactions in a number of readers\u201d that his work and pedagogical project would elicit.<\/a>[i] Many, Freire anticipated, \u201cwill not (or will not wish to) accept my denunciation of a state of oppression which gratifies the oppressors.\u201d<\/a>[ii] For this reason, he prefaced his now-famous book in the following terms: \u2018this admittedly tentative work is for radicals.\u201d<\/a>[iii]<\/p>\n

Indeed, Freire revolutionized how we approach our task as educators\u2014especially for those of us who come to the task as critical theorists. He was, of course, not the first to challenge the traditional models of education that viewed the student as an empty vessel to be filled with the master\u2019s knowledge. Socrates, long before him, Rousseau during the Enlightenment, John Dewey and Francis Parker in the earlier twentieth century\u2014many challenged the traditional models of education and highlighted the value of practice, of doing. But none framed the challenge so directly in the language of critical praxis. None so clearly placed the question of education in the framework of critical theory and of an emancipatory project guided by the ambition of a more equal and just society. Freire\u2019s work is unique in this respect, and as a result, uniquely threatening to the status quo.<\/p>\n

The goal of human emancipation animates Freire\u2019s project: to empower persons who are disadvantaged to liberate themselves and, at the same time, to liberate those who take advantage of them. The method he develops is humble: to dialogue with those who are disadvantaged in order to spark their own reflections and action\u2014in effect, to treat all others as fully equal, knowledgeable subjects. Freire places the unity of theory and praxis at the very heart of his analysis, and underscores the notion of \u201cunity\u201d: it is only when reflection is wedded to action that people will fully understand and overcome their condition.<\/p>\n

Freire\u2019s central point is that those who are disadvantaged know well the modes of exploitation that bind them. Through dialogue, exchange, and practical engagement\u2014through reflection and action\u2014they can come to fully understand how they are being exploited, the methods of their own domination, and they can discover the most effective means to resist and overcome their exploitation. As they become aware, they go through a process of self-transformation, such that, after first coming to comprehend the modes of exploitation that bind them, they overcome their first instinctive desire to become the ones who exploit, and finally learn to combat their exploitation. In the process, they free themselves, but also those who hold them down.<\/p>\n

Freire\u2019s book and his pedagogy had an extraordinary influence on education at an international level, especially in the United States. So much so, in fact, that his ideas became somewhat mainstreamed and shorn of their more radical politics. Today, fifty years after its publication, though, Freire\u2019s Pedagogy of the Oppressed\u00a0<\/em>is under attack<\/a>, accused of being at the root of what is now called \u201cCultural Marxism\u201d\u2014a term that, as the Yale University historian Samuel Moyn<\/a>shows, has a very toxic history.<\/p>\n

How then can we deploy Freire\u2019s text and ideas today in our contemporary political struggles? What work can we do by returning to his critical text? These are the questions we will address in Critique 4\/13.<\/p>\n

We are delighted to gather at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro to discuss Paulo Freire\u2019s work with brilliant scholars and educators Maria In\u00eas Marcondes de Souza (Professor and Director of the Department of Education, PUC-Rio University), Cecilia Boal (Theater Director of the \u201cTheater of the Oppressed\u201d and Psychoanalyst), Alessandra Vannucci (Professor in the Department of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Theater Director), and Antonio Pele (Professor in the Law School at PUC-Rio University).<\/p>\n

Welcome to Critique 4\/13!<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h1>\n

<\/a>[i] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Continuum, 1968), 21.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[ii] Ibid.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[iii] Ibid. Freire added here, \u201cI am certain that Christians and Marxists, though they may disagree with me in part or in whole, will continue reading to the end. But the reader who dogmatically assumes closed, \u2018irrational\u2019 positions will reject the dialogue I hope this book will open.\u201d (21)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt At a time when Paulo Freire\u2019s ideas and pedagogy are under attack, especially in his native country of Brazil, it is particularly important to return to his writings, not only to discover new critical moves to… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-4-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}