#Paulo Friere

[vivrante]

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other”

Paulo Friere, on the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing deposits.

[karinyosa]

"if we're going to heal from the trauma of being treated unequally, we have to be radical. we have to always be criticizing ourselves and always attending to our own needs. we have to always be criticizing others and always attending to their needs, at the same time. we have to stop assuming that we know what other people really think and want and acting accordingly."

elliot sang, live reading of pedagogy of the oppressed chapter 2

[captn-lovelace]

1st week of class is done! i feel so relieved, i like teaching lol. i should’ve known i would, i’ve been doing TA stuff for years atp. but ive always claimed i want to be a professor someday, and it’s nice to have confirmation that that’s actually true

students always have interesting insights. i’m so excited to hear what connections they make

[azspot]

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.

Paulo Friere

[alleyjunk]

Like honest to god I hate talking about politics with people at this point because everyone wants to act like they're on an equal level of knowledge when they just aren't. They don't read, they don't investigate, they don't do any of their own research. Just regurgitating info from MSM and tiktok. Debating is worthless, come to me when you want something of a student/teacher relationship a la paulo friere

[cipher-fresh]

[ID: A screenshot from Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere reading "The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not "marginals," are not people living "outside" society. They have always been "inside"—inside the structure which made them "beings for others." The solution is not to "integrate" them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become "beings for themselves." Such transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressors purposes; hence their utilization of the banking concept of education to avoid the threat of student conscientizagao." (consciousness raising) /End ID] (Emphasis in bold is my own.)

A reading from one of my classes with a very similar topic to something I was analyzing in a post before

[lix-ables]

tagged by @seo--changbin @abcdefgiwsmcty @liknws @ch4nb4ng hehe ‹3

favourite colour: pastel colours, shades of green, brown and purple

currently reading: PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED — PAULO FRIERE and some social psychology textbook by myers / baron eep ( along with the briar u series )

last song: rollerblades by dominic fike

last series: new girl

last movie: red, white and royal blue ( HEART WRENCHING SHIT )

sweet/savory/spicy: spicy !!

currently working on: skz + corruption, skz + bondage, when they tease you, racer ! minho

tagging . 🍓 . @mnwrld @comet-falls @shoverse @heesuncore @hee-pster @jaehvuno @starlostseungmin + anyone that wants to have a go !!

[declaredmissing]

you can't find the sun in a locked room; in this blinding absence of light

I’ve been wanting to write for a while, but I’ve been struggling to piece fragments of my thoughts into something coherent. I’ve been at the crossroads of a difficult decision in the last month, and it was hard to write in the midst of feeling that I need to completely re-evaluate beliefs and illusions I had been clinging on to.

But there are some things I’ve been thinking about lately, that I want to share. I’ve been working my way through a few books, some that I’m reading for the first time, some that I’m returning to and re-reading for comfort: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere, Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, Walking with the Comrades by Arundhati Roy, Dear Meg: Advice on Life, Love, and the Struggle, Politics in Command: A Taxonomy of Economism by J. Moufawad-Paul, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, and Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis.

I’ve been thinking lately of a passage from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where Friere wrote, “The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at once and at the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized.” I’ve been thinking of this especially next to a quote by Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer formerly part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: “You can’t find the sun in a locked room”.

What keeps me hopeful and resolved to leave my current situation is thinking of what the sun looks like – that I could be happy, and that happiness does not look like this.

I have finally decided that I need to get out. Slowly, I’ve been trying to dismantle entire beliefs and illusions. I’m still struggling to see things clearly, to see through his words that had over time been lodged inside me so deeply I couldn’t discern what was me and what must be scraped out. What’s right and wrong, what’s a normal way to treat a person, if I’m overreacting or being overly sensitive – I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know why I still felt so distressed and unhappy and anxious around him, when he had been so nice to me lately.

My mother tells me, flee him. It was hard to resolve to make that choice, for a long time. I so desperately want to stay in “stability”, not wanting to disrupt and upheave my life, but that is precisely what keeps people clinging to ultimately oppressive relationships, situations, and systems.

In the numerous times I tried to walk away, I was told that I was giving up. That I was a coward. That I was running away. That I didn’t know what love was. That I wasn’t willing to do the work like he was. I stayed because those words reached me at my deepest insecurity: I wanted to be brave in love. I didn’t want to run away. I let him define for me what it means to love. Over time, I stopped remembering why it was worth leaving. He told me, “you think the grass is greener on the other side?” He told me, “You think it’s better in another relationship, with another person? All relationships have their problems.” I started to feel like I needed to stay and try harder because he told me that “love is not easy” and this is what “the work” supposedly looked like, and I believed him instead of trusting my gut feeling that this is not, in fact, what work in love looks like.

I reached out to people to ask them if what I was experiencing was normal or okay. One of them told me, I know it’s painful to walk away, but you deserve to be happy, and you would be so much lighter feeling free.

Instead of thinking of what it could feel like to be free, I thought, what if he really changed this time? I thought, What he did wasn’t that bad. I’ll wait to see if it gets worse. But even as I write this I remember when I told my friend months ago, “I’ll wait and see if it gets worse,” and she said, “Is what he did already not bad enough? What would it take?” When she said that, I realized that I was adjusting what was acceptable.

I have been struggling to find the courage and resolve to choose freedom when it would also mean uprooting so much about my current life. I would think, is my situation really that bad enough to make that risk?

I called my mom, telling her my fear. She talked to me for hours, talking me through every anxiety and hesitation I had. She told me he broke my spirit. That she noticed something was wrong even in the few months we had first started dating. That I had already lost my spark, that something was missing when she would talk to me. She told me, repeatedly, that despite all the work I do fighting for a cause and for a better world, in my own personal life I am being subjected to this. She tells me that I am in a prison, that he has drawn me into it, into the small world of his.

I forgot that a fundamental part of caring for myself is recovering my voice, my ability to write the world for myself. To clearly define my reality. All this time, I had been letting him define what it means to be brave, what it means to love. In times like these when I feel stripped of language and my ability to articulate myself, or to even think of myself, I remember The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself:

What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, “for what do you not have words, yet?”]

What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]

“What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]

If we have been “socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition”, ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” [So, answer this today. And every day.]*

This weekend, I have been trying to recover my reality. I read quotes I have collected on a document, reminding myself what is important to me and what my values look like in practice. I try to reach out to people that make me feel like me, and that remind me better ways of being in the world, of what it’s like to be a good friend. I’m rereading and highlighting sentences from Dear Meg. I write in my favorite journal, allowing myself to vent my pain, but also making an effort to write down the things I enjoy and that I’m looking forward to. I’m looking forward to seeing my family in Christmas; to my muay thai classes; to write and make art and become more me when I am out of this current situation.

I also reach for other small things to comfort myself. A jasmine and ylang ylang candle, the warmth of a paper lantern, attempts to sketch and paint again and to see the world in layers of color. Wrapping a scarf with a mosaic of colors – threads of coral, sand, and cool sea greens – around my neck. Carrying a highlighter with me and my pale lavender journal at all times, reminding myself that what I see and notice and feel is worth putting down on paper. Sending postcards and letters in the mail to people I love, walking to the library and putting books on hold, reading the books people lent me. Reading books that remind me of who I am and what I’m interested in and enjoy learning.

Last month, I finished reading This Blinding Absence of Light, a narrative fiction about the experience of prisoners in concentration camps in Morocco. I thought maybe it could tell me something about how to endure the darkest circumstances; but the story told me nothing about resilience or hope, only what happens to the human spirit when you realize there is no possibility of getting out.

For anyone reading this I want to ask – what is it that makes you brave, and that gives you courage? What do you reach for to pull yourself out in your lowest moments?

I told someone else how hard it was to leave this neighborhood that I loved so much, especially the river that gave me so much grounding when I felt like I had nowhere else to go. She said to me that was a beautiful thing, the ability to love something so much and find beauty no matter where I go even in painful moments like these. And that makes me think – I could be okay no matter what happens to me, no matter where I go, if I am able to do this.

I hope when I feel conflicted again, I can read this and remember it is worth struggling for the choice to feel free on all fronts. I also want to return to this when I feel tempted to isolate myself and withdraw from other people; to remind myself in the moments I most doubt myself and my own reality, any courage I have comes from remembering the words of the people who love me.

[humansingularity]

Socialist Leadership from the perspective of a beginning organizer

These notes were created for a discussion with some comrades from the School of Marxist Fundamentals Discord group, that actually never materialized. At the time I felt pretty strongly that this was my role as a “leader” in a socialist org, however since then I have had a change of heart because of the strong impression left on me by reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere, and a mental…

[karinyosa]

"at all stages of their liberation, the oppressed must see themselves as...engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human."

paulo friere, pedagogy of the oppressed

[evellys--blog]

I satirically imagine Paulo Friere saying this satirically every time he writes about humans uniquely being able to overcome limit situations

Don't forgot to give your dog the talk

[locustheologicus]

The school of Christ is the school of charity. On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus.

The quote from St. Robert Bellarmine, SJ connects with me as a Professor of theology and ethics. I think this will be a quote that I incorporate from now on in my own syllabus. This will be a reminder to me that our academic pursuits cannot simply fulfill theoretical concepts but they must be rooted in praxis, the practical reality of our lived experience, what we in Latinx Theology call Lo Cotidiano. Famed social theorist Paulo Friere would say this about the radical nature of those who enter into the praxis of one's lived reality.

The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can 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 a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.

This also reminds me of a hard lesson that I had to learn when I went through my own Spiritual Exercises. A lesson about learning to not just believe in the love of God but to actually know it. My Spiritual Director would cite the quote below almost every week.

You will find this quote in every one of my journals.

[zestoftheday]

Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

[theburialofstrawberries]

damn they dont make zealots like this anymore

[serpenttailedangel]

I think I reblogged this before, but I thought of something to add to it.

A lot of modern Marxist thought has to do with recentering society, based on the idea that the people at the 'center' of the current society are the privileged once while the oppressed have been pushed the to margins of sozciety. (That is to say that they've been marginalized. Recentering is the act of taking that which was pushed to the margins by the current society and bringing it to the center.

I might be misremembering who originally proposed this, but I think it was Paulo Friere who basically said that since you can't ever make a utopia, the goal should instead be a continuous revolution in which you're always focused on taking whoever is marginalized, bringing them to the center, and then dropping them like a hot rock so you can shift focus to whoever your new society has marginalized and championing this guys instead.

Food for thought whenever you see people who only care about others based on how oppressed they are.

honestly if you only have compassion for oppressed people's suffering because they are in a sufficiently oppressed class, thats a problem. anti-oppressive activism is useless if it ends up as "these people deserve compassion because they are in the Right Group" instead of "everyone deserves compassion and injustice and cruelty is never okay for anyone". anything else is doomed to repeat the very systems it wants to destroy.

[feathersforthesoul]

Paulo Friere