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Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire, until recently a Fellow of the Center for the
Study of Development and Social Change and a Visiting
Professor at Harvard's Center for Studies in Education an j
Development, is now serving as a consultant to the
Office of Education of the World Council of Churches in
Geneva In Chile, he served as consultant to U N E S C 0 s
Institute of Research and Training in Agrarian Reform
(I Cl R A), and also as professor at the University of Chde.
Prior to that, in Brazil, he was Secretary of Education and
General Coordinator of the National Plan of Adult Literacy.
Hisfirst book, EducafSo como Pratica da Liberdade
wns published in Brazilin 1967. Cultural Action for Freedom
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(also available in Penguin) appeared in English translate
in 1970.
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Pedagogy
of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire
Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos
Penguin Educ-ation
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Contents
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Foreword by Richard Shaul! 9
Preface 15
Chapter 1 20
The justification for a pedagogy of the oppressed; the
contradiction between the oppressors and the oppressed, and
how it is overcome; oppression and the oppressors; oppression
and the oppressed; liberation: as a mutual process.
Chapter 2 45
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The 'banking' concept of education as an instrument of
oppression; the problem-posing concept of education as an
instrument for liberation ; the teacher-student contradiction of the
'banking' concept superseded by the problem-posing concept,
education as a world-mediated mutual process; man as a
consciously incomplete being, and his attempt to be more fully
human.
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Chapter 3 60
Dialogics: the essence of education as the practice of freedom;
dialogics and dialogue; dialogue and the search for programme
content; the men-world relationship, 'generative themes’, and
the programme content of education as the practice of freedom;
the investigation of 'generative themes' and its methodology;
the awakening of critical consciousness through the investigation
of 'generative themes'.
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Penguin Education
To the oppressed,
A Division of Penguin Books Ltd,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd,
Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
and to those who suffer with them
and fight at their side
^and cl
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Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd,
1 82-1 90 Wairau Road, Auckland 10,
New Zealand
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Firsi published in Great Britain by Sheed & Ward 1972
Published by Penguin Books 1972
Reprinted 1973, 1974
Copyright© Paulo Freire, 1972
Made and printed in Great Britain oy
C. Nicholls & Company Ltd
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Set in Monotype Times
This book is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser
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Foreword
Chapter 4 96
Antidialogics and dialogics as matrices of opposing theories of
cultural action: the former as an instrument of oppression and
the latter as an instrument of liberation; the theory of
antidialogical action and its characteristics: conquest, divide and
rule, manipulation, and cultural invasion; the theory of dialogical
action and its characteristics: cooperation unity, organization,
and cultural synthesis.
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In the course of a few years, the thought and work of the
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire have spread from the North
East of Brazil to an entire continent, and have made a profound
impact not only in the field of education but also in the overall
struggle for national development. At the precise moment
when the disinherited masses in Latin America are awakening
from their traditional lethargy and are anxious to participate,
as subjects, in the development of their countries, Paulo Freire
has perfected a method for teaching illiterates that has contri
buted, in an extraordinary way, to that process. In 'act, those
who, in learning to read and write, come to a new awareness of
selfhood and begin to look critically at the social situation in
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"which they find themselves, often take the initiative in acting to
transform the society that has denied them this opportunity of
participation. Education is once again a subversive force.
In the United States, we are gradually becoming aware of the
work of Paulo Freire, but thus far we have thought of it
primarily in terms of its contribution to the education of illiter
ate adults in the Third World. If, however, we take a closer
look, we may discover that his methodology as well as his
educational philosophy are as important for us as for the dis
possessed in Latin America. Their s[niggle to become frce_
subjects and to participate in the transformation of their_society__
is similar, in many ways, to the stmggle not only of blacks and
Mexican-Americans, but also of middle-class young people.
And the sharpness and intensity of that struggle in the develop
ing world may well provide us with new insight, new models,
and a new hope as we face our own situation. For this reason
I consider the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in an
English edition to be something of an event.
Paulo Freire’s thought represents the response of a creative
mind and sensitive conscience to the extraordinary misery jmd
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suffering of the oppressed, around him. Born in 1921 in Recife^
the centre of one of the most extreme situations of poverty and
underdevelopment in the Third World, he was soon forced to
experience that reality directly. As the economic crisis in 1929
in the United States began to affect Brazil, the precarious stab
ility of Freire’s middle-class family gave way and he found
himself sharing the plight of the ‘wretched of the earth’. This
had a profound influence on his life as he came to know the
gnawing pangs of hunger and fell behind in school because of
the listlessness it produced; it also led him to make a vow, at
the age of eleven, to dedicate his life to the struggle against_
hunger, so that other children would not have to know the
agony he was then experiencing.
His early sharing of the life of the poor also led him to the
discovery of what he describes as the ^culture of silence’ of the
dispossessed. He came to realize that their ignorance and leth
argy were the direct product of the whole situation of economic,
social, and political domination - and of the paternalism - of
which they were victims. Rather than being encouraged and
equipped to know and respond to the concrete realities of their
world, they were kept ‘submerged’ in a situation in which such
critical awareness and response were practically impossible.
And it became clear to him that the whole educational system
was one of the major instruments for the maintenance of this
culture of silence.
Confronted by this problem in a very existential way, Freirc
turned his attention to the field of education and began to work
on it. Over the years he has engaged in a process of study and
reflection that has produced something quite new and creative
in educational philosophy. From a situation of direct engage
ment in the struggle to liberate men and women for the creation
of a new world, he has reached out to the thought and experi
ence of those in many different situations and of diverse philo
sophical positions: in his words, to ‘Sartre and Mounier, Eric
Fromm and Louis Althusser, Ortega y Gasset and Mao, Martin
Luther King and Che Guevara, Unamuno and Marcuse*. He
has made use of the insights of these men to develop a pers
pective on education which is authentically his own and which
seeks to respond to the concrete realities of Latin America
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His thought on the philosophy of education was first expressed in 1959 in his doctorardissertation aFthe University
of Recife, and later in his work as Professor of the History and
Philosophy of Education in the same university, as well as in
his early experiments with the teaching of illiterates in that same
city. The methodology he developed was widely used by
Catholics and others in literacy campaigns throughout the
North East of Brazil, and was considered such a threat to the
old order that Freirc was jailed immediately after the military
coup in 1964. Released seventy days later and encouraged to
leave the country, Freirc went to Chile, where he spent five
years working with UNESCO and the Chilean Institute for
Agrarian Reform in programmes of adult education. He then
acted as consultant at Harvard University’s School of Educa
tion, and worked in close association with a number of groups
engaged in new educational experiments in rural and urban
areas. He is presently serving as Special Consultant to the Office
of Education of the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
Frei re has written many articles in Portuguese and Spanish,
and his first book, Educa^ao como Prdtica da Liberdade, was
published in Brazil in 1967. His latest and most complete work,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is the first of his writings to be
published in the United States.
In this brief introduction, there is no point in attempting
to sum up, in a few paragraphs, what the author develops in a
number of pages. That would be an oflence to the richness,
depth, and complexity of his thought. But perhaps a word o£
witness has its place here - a personal witness as to why I find
a dialogue with the thought of Paulo Freirc an exciting ad
venture. Fed up as Lam with the abstractness and sterility of
so much intellectual work in academic circles today, I am cxcltcTTy a process of reflection which is set in a thoroughly
historical context, which is carried on in the midst of a struggle
to create a new social order and thus represents a new unity of
theory and praxis. And 1 am encouraged when a man of the
stature of Paulo Freire incarnates a rediscovery of thejwmanizing vocation of the intellectual, and demonstrates the power
of thought to negate accepted limits and open the way to a new
future.
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Freire is able to do this because he operates on one basic
assumption: that man’s ontological vocation (as he calls it) is
t2-b?.ASMwho acts upoh and transforms lus xyor^and
in, ^Ljojogjupyes towards ever new possibilities of fuller and
richer life individua]Hy_and collectiyejy^TTiis ‘world’ to whiS
he relates is not a static and closed order, a given reality which
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man must accept and to which he must adjust; rather, it is a
problem to be worked on and solved. It is the material used by
man to create history, a task which he performs as he overcomes
th-at ^jehj^dehumanizing at any particular time and place
and dares to create the qualitatively new. For Freire, the re
sources for that task at the present time are provided by the
advanced technology of our Western world, but the social
vision which impels us to negate the present order and demon
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strate that history has not ended comes primarily from the
suffering and struggle of the people of the Third World.
Coupled with this is Freire’s conviction (now supported by
a wide background of experience) that every human being, nq
matter how ‘ignorant or submerged in the ‘cuIture^qf sifeacc/
he may Te, is capable, of Joo king.j:riucallz at his world Jn..a_
dialogical cn
c cgunter whh_^others.' Provided with the proper
tools for ----such1 an encounter, he can gnidually perc.Qiv£L_his
personal and social realityj as
contradictions in
as well
well as
as the
the contradictions
in it,
it,
become conscious of his own perception of that reality, and
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deal critically with it. In this process, the old, paternalistic
teacher - student relationship is overcome. A peasant can
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^acilitate this process tor his neighbour more effectively than a
teacher brought in from outside. ‘Men educate each other
through the mediation of the world.’
As this happens, the word takes on new power. It is no longer
fe:an abstraction or magic but a means by which man discovers
imsclf and his potential as he gives names to things around
tim. As Freire puts it, each man wins back his right to say his
' own word, to name the world.
When an illiterate peasant participates in this sort of educa
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tional experience, he comes to a new awareness of self, has a
new sense of dignity, and is stirred by a nevkhope. Time and
a8ain, peasants have expressed these discoveries in striking
ways after a few hours ol class: T now realize I am a man, an
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educated man.’ ‘We were blind, now our eyes have been
opened.’ ‘Before this, words meant nothing to me; now they
speak to me and I can make them speak.’ ‘Now we will no
longer be a dead weight on the cooperative farm.’ When this
happens in the process of learning to read, men discover that
they are creators of culture,, and that all their work can be
creative. ‘I work, and_worXingJLtransform the world.’ And as
those who have been completely marginalized are so radically
transformed, they are no longer willing to be mere objects,
responding to changes occurring around them; they are more
likely to decide to take upon themselves the struggle to change
the structures of society which until now have served to oppress
them. For this reason, a distinguished Brazilian student of
national development recently affirmed that this type of educa
tional work among the people represents a new factor in social
change and development, ‘a new instrument of conduct for the
Third World, by which it can overcome traditional structures
and enter the modern world’.
At first sight Paulo Freire’s method of teaching illiterates in
Latin America seems to belong to a different world from that in
which we find ourselves. Certainly it would be absurd to claim
that it should be copied here. But there are certain parallels
in the two situations which should not be overlooked. Our
advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most
of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic
of its system. To the degree that this happens, we are also be
coming submerged in a new ‘culture of silence’.
The paradox is that the same technology which does this to
us also creates a new sensitivity to what is happening. Especially
among young people, the new media together with the erosion
of old concepts of authority open the way to acute awareness
of this new bondage. The young perceive that their right to
say their own word has been stolen from them, and that few
thifigT are more important than the struggle to win it back.
And they also realize thaFtHeeducational system today - from
kindergarten to university - is their enemy.
There is no such thing as a neutral educational process.
Education cither functions as an instrument which is used to
facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the
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it h °^!^e Prcsent system and bring about conformity to it or
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freedom', the means by which men
covTrT6"
Cr,.t,Cally and creatively with reality and^:
Thp h °7 t0 part,c,pate ,n
transformation of their world,
thic 676 Opment of an educational methodology that facilitates
our Pr0CeSS
inevitably lead to tension and conflict within
ty* But jt C01J,d a,so contribute to the formation of a
new man and mark the beginning of a new era in Western
history. For those who
are committed to that task and are
searching for cc
concepts and tools for experimentation, Paulo
Freire’s thought
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years ahead.
Preface
Richard Shaull
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These introductory pages to Pedagogy of the Oppressed are the
result of my observations during the last 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 analyse
the role of ‘conscientization’1 and in actual experimentation
with a genuinely liberating education, the ‘fear of freedom’
discussed in the first chapter of this book. Not infrequently,
training course participants call attention to ‘the danger of
“conscientization ”’ in a way which reveals their own fear of
freedom. Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic; others
add that critical consciousness may lead to disorder. But some '
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 conscientization of men to a specific case 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
man 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 naive, and when I found out how naive I was, 1 started to
get critical. But this discovery hasn’t made me a fanatic, and
I don’t feel any collapse either.’
Doubt regarding the possible effects of conscientization
implies a premise which the doubter does not always make
explicit: Itjs better for the victims of injustice not to recognize
themselves as such. In fact, conscientization does not lead men
I. The term ‘conscientization’ refers to learning to perceive social,
political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the
oppressive elements of reality. See chapter 3. (Translator's note.')
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to ‘destructive fanaticism’. On the contrary, by making it
possible for men to enter the historical process as responsible
subjects,2 conscientization enrolls them in the search for selfaffirmation, thus avoiding fanaticism.
The awakening of critical consciousness leads the way to the expres
sion of social discontents precisely because these discontents are real
components of an oppressive situation.3
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Fear of freedom, of which its possessor is not necessarily
aware, makes him see ghosts. Such an individual is actually
taking refuge in an attempt to achieve security, which he prefers
to the risks of liberty. As Hegel testifies in The Phenomenology of
Mind\
It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . .. the individual
who has not staked his life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person;
but he has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent
self-consciousness.
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Men rarely admit their fear of freedom openly, however, tend-,
ing 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 conscientization
threatens to place that status quo in question, it thereby seems
to constitute a threat to freedom itself.
Thought and study alone did not produce Pedagogy of the
Oppressed} it is rooted in concrete situations and describes the
reactions of workers (peasant or urban) and of the members of the
middle-class whom I have observed directly or indirectly during
the course of my educative work. Continued observation will
give me an opportunity to modify or to corroborate in later
studies the points put forward in this introductory work.
This volume will probably arouse negative reactions in a
number of readers. Some will regard my position vis-a-vis
the problem of human liberation as purely idealistic, or may
2. The term ‘Subjects’ denotes those who know and act, in contrast
to ‘objects’, which arc known and acted upon.(Tru'islalor'snote.')
3. Francisco WetTert, in the preface to my Educa^do cotno Prddica da
Liber dade.
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even consider discussion of ontological 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 which gratifies the oppressors. Accord
ingly, this admittedly tentative work is for radicals. lam 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 ‘irrational’ posi
tions will reject the dialogue I hope this book will open.
Sectarianism, fed by fanaticism, is always castrating. Radical
ization, nourished by a critical spirit, is always creative. Sec
tarianism makes myths and thereby alienates; radicalization
is critical and thereby liberates. Radicalization involves in
creased commitment to the position one has chosen, and thus
ever greater engagement in the effort to transform concrete,
objective reality. Conversely, sectarianism, because it is myth
making and irrational, turns reality into a false (and therefore
unchangeable) ‘reality’.
Sectarianism in any quarter is an obstacle to the emancipa
tion of mankind. The Rightist version thereof does not always,
unfortunately, cal! forth its natural counterpart: radicalization
of the revolutionary. Not infrequently, revolutionaries them
selves become reactionary by falling into sectarianism in the
process of responding to the sectarianism of the Right. This
possibility, however, should not lead the radical to become a
docile pawn of the elites. Engaged in the process of liberation,
he cannot remain passive in the lace of the oppressor s violence.
On the other hand, the radical is never a subjectivist. For him
the subjective aspect exists only in relation to the objective
aspect (the concrete reality which is the object of his analysis).
Subjectivity and objectivity thus join in a dialectical unity
producing knowledge in solidarity with action, and vice versa.
For his part, the sectarian of whatever persuasion, blinded
by his irrationality, docs not (or cannot) perceive the dynamic
of reality - or else he misinterprets it. Should he think dialectic
ally, it is with a ‘domesticated dialectic’. The Rightist sectarian
whom I have earlier, in Educa^do como Prdtica da Liberdade,
termed a ‘born sectarian’) wants to slow down the historical
process, to ‘domesticate’ time and thus to domesticate men.
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The Leftist-turned-sectarian goes totally astray when he
attemptsjo interpret reality and history dialectically, and falls
into essentially fatalistic positions.
The Rightist sectarian differs from his Leftist counterpart in
that the former attempts to domesticate the present so that (he
hopes) the future will reproduce this domesticated present,
while the latter considers the future pre-established - a kind of
inevitable fate, fortune, or destiny. For the Rightist sectarian,
‘today’, linked to the past, is something given and immutable;
for the Leftist sectarian, ‘tomorrow’ is decreed beforehand, is
inexorably pre-ordained. This Rightist and this Leftist are both
reactionary because, starting from their respective false views
of history, both develop forms of action which negate freedom.
The fact that one man imagines a ‘well-behaved’ present and
the other a predetermined future does not mean that they
therefore fold their arms and become spectators (the former
expecting that the present will continue, the latter waiting for
the already ‘known’ future to come to pass). On the contrary,
closing themselves into ‘circles of certainty’ from which they
cannot escape, these men ‘make’ their own truth. It is not the
truth of men who struggle to build the future, running the risks
involved in this very construction. Nor is it the truth of men
who fight side by side and learn together how to build this
future - which is not something given to be received by men,
but is rather something to be created by them. Both types of
sectarian, treating history in an equally proprietary fashion,
end up without the people - which is another way of being
against them.
While the Rightist sectarian, closing himself in ‘his’ truth,
does no more than fulfil his natural role, the Leftist who
becomes sectarian and rigid negates his very nature. Each,
however, as he revolves about ‘his’ truth, feels threatened
if that truth is questioned. Thus, each considers anything that
is not ‘his’ truth a lie. As the journalist Marcio Moreira Alves
once told me: ‘They both suffer from an absence of doubt, ’
The radical, committed to human liberation, docs not
become the prisoner of a ‘circle of certainty’ within which
he also imprisons reality. On the contrary, the more radical
he is, the more fully he enters into reality so that, knowing
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it better, he can better transfdrm it. He is not afraid to confront,
to listen, to see the world unveiled. He is not afraid to meet
the people or to enter into dialogue with them.4 He does not
consider himself the proprietor of history or of men, or the
liberator of the oppressed; but he does commit himself,
within history, to fight at their side.
The pedagogy of the oppressed, the introductory outlines !
of which are presented in the following pages, is a task for
radicals; it cannot be carried out by sectarians.
I will be satisfied if among the readers of this work there
are those sufficiently critical to correct mistakes and mis
understandings, to deepen affirmations and to point out
aspects I have not perceived. It is possible that some may
question my right to discuss revolutionary cultural action,
a subject of which I have no concrete experience. However,
the fact that I have not personally participated in revolu
tionary action does not disqualify me from reflecting on this*
theme. Furthermore, in my experience as an educator with the
people, usjng a dialogical and problem-posing education, 1 have
accumulated a comparative wealth of material which challenged
me to run the risk of making the affirmations contained in this
work.
From these pages I hope at least the following will endure:
my trust in the people, and my faith in men and in the creation
of a world in which it will be easier to love.
Here I would like to express my gratitude to Elza, my wife
and ‘first reader', for the understanding and encouragement
she has shown my work, which belongs to her as well. I would
also like to extend my thanks to a group of friends for their
comments on my manuscript. At the risk of omitting some
names, I must mention Joao da Veiga Coutinho, Richard
Shaull, Jim Lamb, Myra and Jovelino Ramos, Paulo de Tarso,
Almino Affonso, Plinio Sampaio, Ernani Maria Fiori, Marcela
Gajardo, Jose Luis Fiori, and Joao Zacarioti. The responsibility
for the affirmations made herein is, of course, mine alone.
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4. ‘As long as theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful
of “academicians” in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going
astray,’ writes Rosa Luxembourg in Reform or Revolution, cited in
C. Wright Mills, The Marxists.
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Chapter 1
While the problem of humanization has always been, from an
axmlogicali point of view, man’s central problem, it now takes
on the character of an inescapable concern^ Concern for
humantzabon leads at once to the recognition of dehumaniza
tion. not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical
reahty. And as man perceives the extent of dehumanization,
he asks himself if humanization is a viable possibility. Within
history, m concrete, objective contexts, both humanization
and dehumamzation are possibilities for man as an uncom
pleted being conscious o f his incompleteness.
But while both humanization and dehumanization are
real alternatives, only the first is man’s vocation. This vocation
is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation.
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 (though in a different way)
t ose who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of
1. An axiological viewpoint is one which involves the ethical, aesthetic
and religious.
2. The current movements of rebellion, especially those of youth, while
they necessarily reflect the peculiarities of their respective settings, mani.ht ln
ejSSence thls Preoccupalion with man and men as beings in
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?nd Wlth lhC W°rld ~ a PreoccuPafion with what and how they
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thCy PlaCC consurn€r civilization in judgement, denounce
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ypcs o ureaucracy, demand the transformation of the universities
t i.mgxng the rigid nature ofthe teacher - student relationship and placing
•hal refcmonsh.p wHhin the context of reality), propose the transform^
Hon o. reahty itself so that universities can be renewed, attack old orders
« nd established institutions in the attempt to affirm men as the subjects
decrsion, all these movements reflect the style of our age, which is
more anthropological than anthr<»|x>ccnlric.
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becoming more fully human. This distortion occurs within
history; but it is not an historical vocation. Indeed, to accept
dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to
cynicism or total despair. The struggle for humanization,
for the emancipation of labour, for the overcoming of aliena
tion, for the affirmation of men as persons would be meaning
less. 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 "-i
humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppres
sors 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
lit tempt 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 this ‘generosity’, which is nourished by
death, despair, and poverty. That is why its dispensers become
desperate at the slightest threat to the source of that false
generosity.
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. Real generosity lies in striving so that those
hands - whether of individuals or entire peoples - need be
extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more
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they become human hands which work and, by working,
transform the world.
This lesson and apprenticeship must come, however, from
the oppressed themselves and from those who are truly with
them. By fighting for the restoration of their humanity, as
individuals or as peoples, 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? It will
not be defined by chance but through the praxis of their
quest for it, through recognizing 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 lovelcssness
which lies at the heart of the oppressors' violence, lovelessness
even when clothed in false generosity.
But 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 men; but for them, to be a ‘man’ is to be
an oppressor. This is their model of humanity. This pheno
menon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain
moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of
‘adherence’ to the oppressor. Under these circumstances they
cannot ‘consider’ him sufficiently clearly to objectify him - to
discover him ‘outside’ themselves. This does not necessarily
mean that the oppressed are not aware that they are down
trodden. 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 docs not yet signify involvement in a struggle to
overcome the contradiction;3 the one pole aspires not to
liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.
In this situation the oppressed cannot see the ‘new man’
as the man to be born from the resolution of this contradiction,
3- As used throughout this book, the term ‘contradiction’ denotes the
dialectical conflict between opposing social forces. {Translator's note.)
23
in the process of oppression giving way to liberation. For
them, the new man is themselves become oppressors. Their
vision oCthe new man is individualistic; because of their
identification with the oppressor, they have no consciousness
of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class.
It is not to become free men that they want agrarian reform,
but in order to acquire land and thus become landowners - or,
more precisely, bosses over other workers. It is a rare peasant
who, once ‘promoted’ to overseer, does not become more
of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner
himself. This is because the context of the peasant’s situation,
that is, oppression, remains unchanged. In this example,
the overseer, in order to make sure of his job, must be as tough
as the owner - and more so. This illustrates our previous
assertion that during the initial stage of their struggle the
oppressed find in the oppressor their model of‘manhood’.
Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation
of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must
confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who
directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - con
ditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private
revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast
over them.
The ‘fear of freedom’ which afflicts the oppressed,4 a fear
which may equally well lead them to desire the role of oppressor
or bind them to the role of oppressed, should be examined.
One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor
and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the
imposition of one man’s choice uponLanother,Transforming the
consciousness of the man prescribed to.LntQ_QneJha£conforms
to the prescriber's consciousness. Thus, the behaviour of the
oppressed is a prescribed behaviour, following as it docs the
guidelines of the oppressor.
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor
and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom..
would require them to eject this image and replace it with
4. This fear of freedom is also to be found in the oppressors, though,
obviously, in a different form. The oppressed are afraid to embrace
freedom; the oppressors arc afraid of losing the ‘ freedom ’ to oppress.
7.
24
I.
autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest,
not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly.
Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an
idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable
condition for the quest for human completion.
To surmount the situation of oppression, men must first
critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming
action they can create a new situation - one which makes
possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity. But the struggle
to be more fully human has already begun in the authentic
struggle to transform the situation. Although the situation
of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing totality
affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress,
it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage
for both the struggle for a fuller humanity; the oppressor,
who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others,
is unable to lead this struggle.
However, the oppressed, who have adapted to the structure
of domination in which they are immersed, and have become
resigned to it, are inhibited from waging the struggle for
freedom so long as they feel incapable of running the risks it
requires. Moreover, their struggle for freedom threatens not
only the oppressor, but also their own oppressed comrades
who are fearful of still greater repression. When they discover
within themselves the yearning to be free, they perceive that
this yearning can be transformed into reality only when the
same yearning is aroused in their comrades. But while domin
ated by the fear of freedom they refuse to appeal to, or listen
to the appeals of, others, or even to the appeals of their own
conscience. They prefer gregariousness to authentic comrade
ship; they prefer the security of conformity with their state of
unfreedom to the creative communion produced by freedom
and even the very pursuit of freedom.
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, (hey fear it. They arc at one and the
same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness
they have internalized. The conflict lies in the choice between
25
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being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the
oppressor within or not ejecting him; between human solidarity
or alienation; between following prescriptions or having
choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting
or having the illusion of acting through the action of the
oppressors; between speaking out or being silent, castrated in
their power to create and recreate, in their power to transform
the world. This is the tragic dilemma of the oppressed which
their education must take into account.
This book will present some aspects of what the writer
has termed the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’, a pedagogy which
must be forged with, not for. the oppressed (be they individuals
or whole peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their
humanity. This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes
objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection
will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their
• liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and
remade.
The central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as
divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the
pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves
to be ‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the
midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live
in the duality where to be is to be like, and to be like is to be
like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy
of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that
both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumaniLiberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man
who emerges is a new man, viable only as the oppressoroppressed contradiction is' superceded by the humanization
of all men. Or to put it another way, the solution of this
contradiction is born in the labour which brings this new man
into the world: no longer oppressor or oppressed, but man in
the process of achieving freedom.
This solution cannot be achieved in idealistic terms. In
order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for
their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression,
not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a
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limiting situation which they can transform. This perception
is necessary, but not a sufficient condition by itself for libera
tion; FTmust become the motivatingTorceTbr iWcraTingTicrionr"
Neither does the discovery by the oppressed that they exist
in dialectical relationship as antithesis to the oppressor who
could not exist without them (see Hegel’s The Phenomenology
of Mind) in itself constitute liberation. The oppressed can
overcome the contradiction in which they are caught only when
this perception enlists them in the struggle to free themselves.
The same is true with respect to the individual oppressor
as a person. Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause
considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to
solidarity with the oppressed. Rationalizing his guilt through
paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding
them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity
requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom
one is identifying; it is a radical posture. If what characterizes
the oppressed is their subordination to the consciousness of the
master, as Hegel affirms,5 true solidarity with the oppressed
means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality
which has made them these ‘beings for another’. The oppressor
shows solidarity with the oppressed only when he stops regarding
the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons
who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice,
cheated in the sale of their labour - when he stops making
pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an
act of Jove. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of
this act of love, in its existcntiality, in its praxis. It is a farce
to affirm that men are people and thus should be free, yet to do
nothing tangible to make tlifs aTTirmation a reality.
Since it is in a concrete situation- that the oppressoroppressed contradiction is established, the resolution of this
contradiction must be objectively verifiable. Hence, for radicals
- both for the man who discovers himself to be an oppressor
5. Analysing (he dialectical relationship between the consciousness of
the master and the consciousness of the oppressed, Hegel, in the same
book, states: ‘The one is independent, and its essential nature is to be for
itself; the other is dependent, and its essence is life or existence for another.
The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter the Bondsman.’
27
and for the oppressed - the concrete situation which begets
oppression must be transformed.
—present this radical demand for the objective transformation of reality, to combat subjectivist immobility which
would divert the recognition of oppression into patient waiting
for oppression to disappear by itself, is not to dismiss the role
of subjectivity in the struggle to change structures. On the
contrary, one cannot conceive of objectivity without sub
jectivity/Neither can exist without the other, nor can they be
dichotomized. The separation of objectivity from subjectivity,
the denial of the latter when analysing reality or acting upon it,
is objectivism. On the other hand, the denial of objectivity in
analysis or action, resulting in a subjectivism which leads to
solipsistic positions, denies action itself by denying objective
reality. Neither objectivism nor subjectivism, nor yet psy
chologism is propounded here, but rather subjectivity and
objectivity in constant dialectical relationship.
To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of
transforming the world and history is naive and simplistic.
It is to admit the impossible: a world without men. Thisobjectivistic position is as ingenuous as that of subjectivism,
which postulates men without a world. World and men do not
exist apart from each other, they exist in constant interaction.
Marx does not espouse such a dichotomy, nor does any other
critical, realistic thinker. What Marx criticized and scientifically
destroyed was not subjectivity, but subjectivism and psy
chologism. Just as objective social reality exists not by chance,
but as the product of human action, so it is not transformed by
chance. If men produce social reality (which in the ‘inversion
of the praxis’ turns back upon them and conditions them),
then transforming that reality is an historical task, a task for
men.
Reality which becomes oppressive results in the contra
distinction of men as oppressors and oppressed. The latter,
whose task it is to struggle for their liberation together with
those who show true solidarity, must acquire a critical aware
ness of oppression through the praxis of this struggle. One of
the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is thatoppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to
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submerge men’s consciousness.6 Functionally, oppression is
domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must
emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by
means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in
order to transform it.
Hay que hacer la opresion real todavfa mAs opresiva ahadiendo a
aquella la conciencia de la opresidn haciendo la infamia todavfa
mas infamante, al pregonarla.7
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Making ‘real oppression more oppressive still by adding to [t
the realization of oppressionj__corresponds to the dialectical
relation between the subjective and the objective. Only in this
state of interdependence is an authentic praxis possible,
without which it is impossible to resolve the oppressoroppressed contradiction. To achieve this goal, the oppressed
must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying
and acting upon that reality. A mere perception of reality not
followed by this critical intervention will not lead to a trans
formation of objective reality - precisely because it is not a
true perception. This is the case of a purely subjectivist percep
tion by someone who forsakes objective reality and creates a
false substitute.
A different type of false perception occurs when a change
in objective reality would threaten the individual or class
interests of the perceiver. In the first instance, there is no
critical intervention in reality because that reality is fictitious:
there is none in the second instance because intervention would
contradict the class interests of the perceiver. In the latter case
the tendency of the perceiver is to behave ‘neurotically’. The
fact exists; but both the fact and what may result from it may
6. ‘Liberating action necessarily involves a moment of perception and
volition. This action both precedes and follows that moment, to which
it first acts as a prologue and which it subsequently serves to effect and
continue within history. The action of domination, however, does not
necessarily imply this dimension; for the structure of domination is
maintained by its own mechanical and unconscious functionality.’ From
an unpublished work by Jose Luis Fiori, who has kindly granted per
mission to quote him.
7. [To bring it to public notice, we must make oppression even more
real by adding to the consciousness of oppression the infamy which at the
same time has to be made more infamous.]
23
be prejudicial to him. Thus it becomes necessary, not precisely
to deny the fact, but to see it differently. This rationalization
as a defence mechanism coincides in the end with subjectivism.
A fact with its truths rationalized, though not denied, loses its
objective base. It ceases to be concrete and becomes a myth
created in defence of the class of the perceiver.
Herein lies one of the reasons for the prohibitions and the
difficulties (to be discussed at length in chapter 4) designed to
dissuade the people from critical intervention in reality. The
oppressor knows full well that this intervention would not be
to his interest. What is to his interest is for the people to
continue in a state of submersion, impotent in the face of
oppressive reality. Lukacs’ warning to the revolutionary party
in Lenine is relevant here:
— il droit, pour employer les mots de Marx, expliqucr aux masses
leur propre action non seulement afin d’assurer la continuity des
experiences rdvolutionnaires du proletariat, mais aussi d’activer consciemment le d£veloppement ult£rieur de ces experiences.
In asserting this need, Lukacs is unquestionably raising the
issue of critical intervention. ‘To explain to the masses their
own action’ is to clarify and illuminate that action, both
in terms of its relationship to the the objective facts which
prompted it, and alsoof its aims. The more the people unveil this
challenging reality which is to be the object of their trans
forming action, the more critically they enter that reality.
In this way they are ‘consciously activating the subsequent
development of their experiences’. There would be no human
action if there were no objective reality, no world to be the
‘not I’ of man to challenge him; just as therejvould be no.
human action if man were not a ‘projection’, if he were not able
to transcend himself, to perceive his reality and understand it in
order to transform it.
In dialectical thought, world and action arc intimately
interdependent. But action is human only when it is not merely
an occupation but also1 a preoccupation, that is, when it is. not
dichotomized from reflection. Reflect ioh, whicb is essential to
action, is implicit in Lukacs’ requirement of‘explaining to the
masses their own action’, just as it is implicit in the purpose
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he attributes to this explanation: that of‘consciously activating
—the subsequent development of experience-.__________________
For us, however, the requirement is seen not in terms of
explaining to, but rather entering into a dialogue with, the people
about their actions. In any event, no reality transforms itself,«
and the duty which Lukacs ascribes to the revolutionary party
of ‘explaining to the masses their own action’ coincides with
our affirmation of the need for the critical intervention of the
people in reality through the praxis. The pedagogy of the
oppressed, which is the pedagogy of men engaged in the fight
for their own liberation, has its roots here. And those who
recognize, or begin to recognize, themselves as oppressed must
be among the developers of this pedagogy. No pedagogy which
is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by
treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their
emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed
must be their Own example in the struggle for their redemption.
The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic,
humanist (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a
pedagogy of man. Pedagogy whjch begins with the egoistic
interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false
generosity of paternalism) and makes of the oppressed the
objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies
oppression. It is an instrument of dehumanization. This is why,
as we affirmed earlier, the pedagogy of the oppressed cannot
be developed or practised by the oppressors. It would be a
contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but
actually implemented a liberating education.
But if the implementation of a liberating education requires
political power and the oppressed have none, how then is it
possible to carry out the pedagogy of the oppressed prior to the
revolution? This is a question of the greatest importance, (he
reply to which is at least tentatively outlined in chapter 4.
One aspect of the reply is to be found in the distinction between
8. ‘The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances
and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men arc products of other
circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change
circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.’ (Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works.}
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systematic education, which can only be changed by political
-power^ and educational-projects^- which should be carried out with the oppressed in the process of organizing them.
The pedagogy of the oppressed, as a humanist and libertarian
pedagogy, has two distinct stages. In the first, the oppressed
unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit
themselves to its transformation. In the second stage, in which
the reality of oppression has already been transformed, this
pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed and "becomes’ a
pedagogy of all men in the process of permanent liberation.
Tn both stages, it is always through action in depth that the
culture of domination is culturally confronted.^ In the first
stage this confrontation occurs through the change in the way
the oppressed perceive the world of oppress ion; in the second
stage, through the expulsion of the myths created and developed
in the old order, which like spectres haunt the new structure
emerging from the revolutionary transformation. ’
In its first stage the pedagogy must deal with the problem
of the consciousness of the oppressed and the oppressor, the
problem of men who oppress and men who suffer oppression. It
must take into account their behaviour, their view of the world,
and their ethics. A particular problem is the duality of the op
pressed: they are contradictory, divided beings, shaped by and
existing in a concrete situation of oppression and violence.
Any situation in which A objectively exploits B or hinders
his pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one
of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence,
even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes
with man’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully
human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression,
violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been
initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators,
if they themselves are the product of violence? How could they
be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called ~forth their existence as oppressed ? There would be no oppressed
had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their
subjugation.
9. This appears to be the fundamental aspect of Mao’s Cultural Revo
lution.
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Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit,
who fail to recognize others as people - not by those who are
oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved
who cause disaffection, but those who cannot love because they
love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror,
who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power
create the concrete situation which begets the ‘rejects of life’.
It is not the tyrannized who are the source of despotism, but
the tyrants; nor the despised who initiate hatred, but those
who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who
negate man, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating
their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become
weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the
strong who have emasculated them.
For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed
(whom they obviously never call ‘the oppressed’ but - depend
ing on whether they are fellow countrymen or not - ‘those
people’ or ‘the blind and envious masses’ or ‘savages’ or
‘natives’ or ‘subversives’) who are disaffected, who are
‘violent’, ‘barbaric’, ‘wicked’, or ‘ferocious’ when they
react to the violence of the oppressors.
Yet it is - paradoxical though it may seem - precisely in the
response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors
that a gesture of love may be found. Consciously or un
consciously, the act of rebellion by the oppressed (an act which
is always, or nearly always, as violent as the initial violence
of the oppressors) can initiate love. Whereas the violence of the
oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human,
the response ol the latter to this violence is grounded in the
desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors
dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves
also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be
human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and
suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had
lost in the exercise of oppression.
It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can
free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can
free neither others nor themselves. It is therefore essential
that the oppressed wage the struggle to resolve the contradiction
33
in which they arc caught. That contradiction will be resolved
by the appearance of the new man who is neither oppressor nor
oppressed — man in the process of liberation. If the goal of the
oppressed is to become fully human, they will not achieve their
goal by merely reversing the terms of the contradiction, by
simply changing poles.
This may seem simplistic: it is not. Resolution of the
oppressor-oppressed contradiction indeed implies the disappearance of the oppressors as a dominant class. However,
the restraints imposed by the former oppressed on their
oppressors, so that the latter cannot reassume their former
position, do not constitute oppression. An act is oppressive
only when it prevents men from being more fully human.
Accordingly, these necessary restraints do not in themselves
signify that yesterday’s oppressed have become today’s
oppressors. Behaviour which prevents the restoration of the
oppressive regime cannot be compared with acts which createand maintain it. One cannot compare it with acts by which few
men deny the majority their right to be human.
However, the moment the new regime hardens into a domin
ating ‘bureaucracy’10 the humanist dimension of the struggle
is lost and it is no longer possible to speak of liberation.
Hence our insistence that the authentic solution of the oppressor
-oppressed contradiction does not lie in a mere reversal of
position, in moving from one pole to the other. Nor does it
lie in the replacement of the former oppressors with new ones
who continue to subjugate the oppressed - all in the name of
their liberation.
But even when contradiction is resolved authentically
by a new situation established by liberated workers, the
former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary,
they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Condi
tioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation
other than their former seems to them like oppression. For10. This rigidity should not be identified with the restraints that must
be imposed on the former oppressors so they cannot restore the oppressive
order. Rather, it refers to the revolution which becomes stagnant and
turns against the people, using the old repressive, bureaucratic State
apparatus (which should have been drastically suppressed, as Marx so
often emphasized).
34
merly, they could cat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel,
and hear Beethoven; whilemil lions didnot eat, had no clothes
or shoes, neither studied nor travelled, much less listened to
Beethoven. Any restriction on this 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 - although
they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of
hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, ‘human
beings’ refers only to themselves; 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 merely conceded, of the oppressed to survival. And they
make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed
is necessary to their own existence.
This behaviour and way of understanding the world and men
(which necessarily makes the oppressors resist the installation
of a new regime) is explained by their experience as a dominant
class. Once a situation of violence and oppression has been
established, it engenders an entire way of li?e anif behaviour
Tor those caught up in it - oppressors and oppressed alike.
Both are submerged in this situation, and both bear the marks
of oppression. Analysis of existential situations of oppression
reveals that their inception lay in an act of violence - initiated
by those with power. This violence, as a process, is perpetuated
from generation to generation of oppressors, who become its
heirs and are shaped in its climate. This climate creates in the
oppressor a strongly possessive consciousness - possessive
of the world and of men. Apart from direct, concrete, material
possession of the world and of men, the oppressor consciousness
could not understand itself - could not even exist. Fromm
said of this consciousness that, without such possession,
‘it would lose contact with the world’. The oppressor con
sciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an
object of its domination. The earth, property, production,
the creations of men, men themselves, time - everything is
reduced to the status of objects at its disposal.
In their unrestrained eagerness to possess, the oppressors
develop the conviction that it is possible for them to transform
everything into objects of their purchasing power; hence their
35
strictly materialistic concept of existence. Money is the measure
of all .things, and profit the primary goal. For the oppressors,
what is worthwhile is to have more - always more - even at the
cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them,
to be is to have and to be of thejjiaving’ class.
A?"beneficiaries of a situation of oppression, the oppressors
cannot perceive that if having is a condition of being, it is a
necessary condition for all men. This is why their generosity is
false. Humanity is a ‘thing’, and they possess it as an exclusive
right, as inherited property. To the oppressor consciousness,
the humanization of the ‘others’, of the people, appears as
subversion, not as the pursuit of full humanity.
The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly of having more
as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves.
They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a
possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and
no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an
inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own
‘effort’, with their ‘courage to take risks’. If others do not have
more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, jindjvprst
"oT aTTisTTieir uniustifiableTngratitude towards the ‘generous
gestures’~of the dominant class., Precisely_..b^use .they are
‘ungrateful’ and ‘envious’, the oppressed are regarded as
potential enemies who must be watched.
. * It cou Id Tiot^be^oTh erwise. If the humanization of the
oppressed signifies subversion, so also does their freedom;
hence the necessity for constant control. And the more the
oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change
them into apparently inanimate ‘things’. This tendency of the
oppressor consciousness to render everything and everyone it
encounters inanimate, in its eagerness to possess, unquestion
ably corresponds with a tendency to sadism. Here is Fromm in
The Heart ofMan:
The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other
animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another
way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism
is to transform a man into a thing, something animate into something
inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one
essential quality of life - freedom.
£
I
} *
36
twtcli Cf'J.
/
37
d
Sadistic love is a perverted love - a love of death, not of life.
Thus, one of the characteristics of the oppressor consciousness,
and its necrophilic view of the world is sadism. As the oppressor
consciousness, in order to dominate, tries to thwart the seeking,
restless impulse, and the creative power which characterize
life, it kills life. More and more, the oppressors are using science
and technology as unquestionably powerful instruments for
their purpose: the maintenance of the oppressive order through
manipulation and repression.^ The oppressed, as objects, as
‘things’, have no purposes except those their oppressors pre
scribe for them.
In the light of what has been said, another issue of indubitable
importance arises: the fact that certain members of the oppressor
class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, thus
moving from one pole of the contradiction to the other.
Theirs is a fundamental role, and has been so throughout the
history of this struggle. It happens; however, that as they cease
to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or simply the heirs of
_ exploitation and move to the side of the exploited, they almost
always' bring \vithi them the marks of their origin: their pre,
judices and their deformations, which include a lack of con
fidence in the people’s ability to think, to want, and to know.
Accordingly, these adherents to the people’s cause constantly
run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as harmful as
that of the oppressors. The generosity of the oppressors is
nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in
order to justify that generosity. Our converts, on the other
hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because
of their background they believe that they must be the executors
of the transformation. They talk about the people, bu£they
do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable
precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be
identified more by his trust in the people, which engages hjm in^
Their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favour without
that trust.
""Those who authentically commit themselves to the people
must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so
9
II. Regarding the ‘dominant forms of social control’, sec Herbert
Marcuse’s One- Dimensional Man and Eros and Civilization.
radical as not to allow for ambivalent behaviour. To affirm this
commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolu
tionary wisdom - which must then be given to (or imposed on)
the people - is to retain the old ways. The man who proclaims
devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into
communion with the people, whom he continues to regard as
totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who
approaches the people but feels alarm at each step they take,
each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and
attempts to impose his ‘status’, remains nostalgic towards his
origins.
Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth.
Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence;
they can no longer remain as they were. Only through comrade
ship with the oppressed can the converts understand their
characteristic ways of living and behaving, which in diverse
moments reflect the structure of domination. One of these
characteristics is the previously mentioned existential duality
of the oppressed, who are at the same time themselves and the
oppressor whose image they have internalized. Accordingly,
until they concretely ‘discover’ their oppressor and in turn their
own consciousness, they nearly always express fatalistic
attitudes towards their situation.
The peasant begins to get courage to overcome his dependence when
he realizes that he is dependent. Until then, he goes along with the
boss and says ‘What can I do? I’m only a peasant.’12
When superficially analysed, this fatalism is sometimes inter
preted as a docility that is a trait of national character. Fatalism
in the_guise of docility is the fruit of an historical and sociological situation, not an essential characteristic of a people’s -;
behaviour. Ialmost always rcLitcd tFOic power ofScstiny
"or fate^or fortune - inevitable forces - or to a distorted view
of God. Under the sway of ma’gic and myth, the oppressed.especially the peasants, who arc almost submerged in nature
(see Mendes’ Memento de Vivos) - sec their suffering, the fruit
of exploitation, as the will of God - as if God were the creator
of this ‘organized disorder’.
12. Words of a peasant during an interview with the author.
!
38
39
Submerged in reality, the oppressed cannot perceive clearly
:*he ‘order’ which serves the interests of the oppressors whose
ttuage they have mternahzed. Chafing under the restrictions
oi this order, they often manifest a type of horizontal violence,
striking out at their own comrades for the pettiest reasons’
Frantz Fanon, in The Wretchedofthe Earth, writes :
The colonized man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has
been deposited in his bones against his own people. This is the period
when the niggers beat each other up, and the police and magistrates
do not know which way to turn when faced with the astonishing
waves ofcrime in North Africa. ... While the settler or the policeman
has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and
to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his
knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by an
other native; for the last resort of the native is to defend his personal
ity vis-a-vis his brother.
It is possible that in this behaviour they are once more mani
festing their duality. Because the oppressor exists within their
oppressed comrades, when they attack those comrades they are
indirectly attacking the oppressor as well.
On the other hand, at a certain point in their existential
experience the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction towards
the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing his way of life
becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the
oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressor, to imitate
him, to follow him. This phenomenon is especially prevalent
in the middle-class oppressed, who yearn to be equal to the
‘eminent’ men of the upper class. Albert Memmi, in an
exceptional analysis of the ‘colonized mentality’, The Colonizer
and the Colonized, refers to the contempt he felt towards the
colonizer, mixed with ‘passionate’ attraction towards him.
How could the colonizer look after his workers while periodically
gunning down a crowd of colonized? How could the colonized deny
himself so cruelly yet make such excessive demands? How could he
hate the colonizers and yet admire them so passionately? (1 too felt
this admiration in spite of myself.)
Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the Oppressed
which derives from their internalization of thc'dpinidn the
oppressors hold of them. So often do they hear thanhey are
Hll
I II
HIMHII
III
■! II
good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning
anything - that they are sick, lazy, and unproductive - that
in the end they become convinced of their own unfitnessr^The—
peasant feels inferior to die boss because the boss j>eems to be
the only one who knows things and is able to run things/13
They call themselves i^orahUalTd’say~thr'‘professor’ is
the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen.
The criteria of knowledge imposed upon them are the con
ventional ones. ‘Why don’t you’, said a peasant participating ’
in a culture circle, (see p. 91) ‘explain the pictures first?
That way it’ll take less time and won’t give us a headache.’
Almost never do they realize that they, too, ‘know things’
they have learned in their relations with the world and with other
men. Giveft the_cjrcuinstances which have produced their
duality, jt is only natural that they distrust themsejy.es.
Not infrequently peasants in educational projects begin
to discuss-a generative theme in a lively manner, then stop
suddenly and say to the educator: ‘Excuse us, we should keep
quiet and let you talk. You are the one.who knows, we don’tknow anything’. They often insist that there is no difference
between them and the animals; when they do admit a difference,
it favours the animals. ‘They are freer than we are.’
It is striking, however, to observe how this self-depreciation
changes with the first changes in the situation of oppression.
I heard a peasant leader say in an asentamiento™ meeting,
‘They used to say we were unproductive because we were lazy
and drunkards. All lies. Now that we are respected as men,
we’re going to show everyone that we were never drunkards or
lazy. We were exploited! ’
As long as their ambiguity persists, the oppressed are
reluctant to resist, and totally lack confidence in themselves.
They have a diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and
power of the oppressor.^ The magical force of the land
owner’s power holds particular sway in the rural areas. A
13. Words of a peasant during an interview with the author.
14. Asentamiento refers to a production unit of the Chilean agrarian
reform experiment. {Translator'snote.')
15. ‘The peasant has an almost instinctive fear of the boss.’ Interview
with a peasant.
I*
40
sociologist friend of mine tells of a group of armed peasants
in a Latin American country who recently took over a
latifundium. For tactical reasons, they planned to hold the
landowner as a hostage. But not one peasant had the courage
to guard him; his very presence was terrifying. It is also possible
that the act of opposing the boss provoked guilt feelings.
In truth, the boss was ‘inside’ them.
The oppressed must see examples of the vulnerability ol the
oppressor so that a contrary conviction can begin to grow
within them. Until this occurs, they will continue disheartened,
fearful, and beaten (see Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution).
As long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their
condition, they fatalistically ‘accept’ their exploitation. Further,
they are apt to react in a passive and alienated manner when
confronted with the necessity to struggle for their freedom and
self-affirmation. Little by little, however, they tend to try out
forms of rebellious action. In working towards liberation,
one must neither lose sight of this passivity nor overlook the
moment of awakening.
Within their unauthentic view of the world and of them
selves, the oppressed feel like ‘things’ owned by the oppressor.
For the latter, to be is to have, almost always at the expense of
those who have nothing. For the oppressed, at a certain point
in their existential experience, to he is not to resemble the
oppressor, but to be under him, to depend on him. Accordingly,
the oppressed are emotionally dependent.
S
The peasant is a dependant. He can’t say what he wants. Before he
discovers his dependence, he suffers He lets off steam at home, where
he shouts at his children, beats them and despairs. He complains
about his wife and thinks everything is dreadful He doesn’t let off
steam with the boss because he thinks the boss is a superior being.
Lots of times, the peasant gives vent to his sorrows by drinking.’6
I
This total emotional dependence can lead the oppressed to
what Fromm calls necrophilic behaviour: the destruction ol
life - their own or that of their oppressed fellows.
It is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and
become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation
that they begin to believe in themselves. This discovery cannot
16. Interview with a peasant.
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41
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 a praxis.
Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action,
must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever stage their
struggle for liberation has reached.17 The content of that
dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical
conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality.
But to substitute monologue, slogans and communiques for
dialogue is to try to liberate the oppressed with the instruments
of domestication. Attempting to liberate the oppressed without
their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat
them as objects which must be saved from a burning building;
it is to lead them into the populist pitfail and transform them
into masses which can be manipulated.
Ar all stages of _their liberation, the oppressed must see
themselves as men engaged in the ontological and historical
vocation of becoming more fully human. Reflection and action
become imperative when one does not erroneously attempt to
create a dichotomy between the content of humanity and its
historical forms.
The insistence that the oppressed engage in reflection on their
concrete situation is not a call to armchair revolution. On the
contrary, reflection - true reflection - leads to action. On the
other hand, when the situation calls for action, that action will
constitute an authentic praxis only if its consequences become
the object of critical reflection. In this sense, the praxis is the
new raison d'etre of the oppressed; and the revolution, which
inaugurates the historical moment of this raison d'etre, is not
viable apart from their concomitant conscious involvement.
Otherwise, action is pure activism.
To achieve this praxis, however, it is necessary to trust jn^
the oppressed and in their ability to reason. Whoever lacks this
tnjsFwill fail to bring^about (or will abandon) dialogue, reflection and communication, and will fall into using slogans, com
muniques, monologues and instructions. Superficial conversions
to the cause of liberation carry this danger.
17. Not in the open, of course; that would only provoke the fury of the
oppressor and lead to still greater repression.
42
43
Political action
action on
on the
the side
side of
of the
the oppressed must be
pedagogical action in the authentic
.c sense of the word, hence,
- actl0n wiIh the oppressed. Th™? '.-ho
•; ■^WOf^f'orliberation
must not take advantage of the er
‘
motional_ dependence of the
11-
!r
i ■
for this struggle) must reach this conviction as Subjects, not as
objects. They also must intervene critically in the situation
which surrounds them and marks them: propaganda cannot
achieve this. While the conviction of the necessity for struggle
(without which the struggle is unfeasible) is indispensable to the
revolutionary leadership (indeed, it was this conviction which
constituted that leadership), it is also necessary for the op
pressed. It is necessary, that is, unless one intends to carry out
the transformation/or the oppressed rather than with them. It
is my belief that only the latter type of transformation is valid.18
The object in presenting these considerations is to defend the
eminently pedagogical character of the revolution. The revolu
tionary leaders of every epoch who have affirmed that the
oppressed must accept the struggle for their liberation - an
obvious point - have also thereby implicitly recognized the
pedagogical aspect of this struggle. Many of these leaders,
however (perhaps due to natural and understandable biases
against pedagogy), have ended up using the ‘educational’
methods employed by the oppressor. They deny pedagogical
action in the liberation process, but they use propaganda to
convince.
It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they
accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from
that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle. They
must realize that they are fighting not merely for freedom from
hunger, but, to quote Fromm’s The Heart of Man, for
I -■
I
m
is oPP„±
“
as a
i
employ the methods of dZn'nizatio/ hberat,On
n0‘
The
oppressed that they must fight for their liberation is not a gift
bestowed by the revolutionary leadership
but the result of
their own conscienlization.
vicXof theZ“Iyr,CaderS mUSt realizc that ,heir 0WI’ conhitionary wisdom) f Stri’es'c (a cruci:11 dimension of revois authentThi
T
e'VCn !° ",C"1 hy
~
reached ratiJr L
" “'"H0'
Pack;,8ed ;llld ’old; it is
OnlySS-Xr:5,0 11 '°,a,ily O.rrcflcctio" -d -ion.
situation led them (/ t\VCniCntJnrCah[y’Wllhln ;,n historical
change it.
"C'ZC ‘h,S si,uation and >o wish to
•XESZ-.....
... ■
58
make such a
" “ "cy a,«
and
.n,,
„0|
-
... freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and to venture.
Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible,
not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine.... It is not enough
that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of
automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death,
lhe oppressed, who have been shaped by the death-affirming
climate of oppression, must find through their struggle the
way to life-aflirming humanization, and this does not lie simply
in having more to eat (though it does involve and cannot fail
to include having more to eat). The oppressed have been
destroyed precisely because their situation has reduced
them to things. In order to regain their humanity they must
18. These pointswill be discussed at length in chapter 4.
c
mu
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44
cease to be things and fight as men. This is a radical require
ment. They cannot enter the struggle as objects in order later
to become men.
The struggle begins with men’s recognition that they have
been destroyed. Propaganda, management, manipulation - all
arms of domination - cannot be the instruments of their rchumanization. The only effective instrument is a humanizing
pedagogy in which the revolutionary leadership establishes a
permanent relationship of dialogue with the oppressed. In a
humanizing pedagogy the method ceases to be an instrument by
which the teachers (here, the revolutionary leadership) can
manipulate the students (the oppressed), because it expresses
the consciousness of the students themselves.
The method is, in fact, the external form of consciousness manifest
in acts, which takes on the fundamental property of consciousness its intentionality. The essence of consciousness is being with the world
and this behaviour is permanent and unavoidable. Accordingly, con
sciousness is in essence a ‘way towards' something apart from itself,
outside itself, which surrounds it and which it apprehends by means
of its ideational capacity. Consciousness is thus by definition a
method, in the most general sense of the word.17
A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice cointentional education. Teachers and students (leadership and
people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the
task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it
critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they
attam this knowledge of reality through common rcficctmn and
action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. In
this way, the presence of the oppressed in the struggle for their
liberation will be what it should be: not pseudo-participation,
but committed involvement.
|9. I-roin Alvaro Vieira Pinto's work in preparation on the philosophy
of science. 1 consider the quoted portion of great importance for the un
derstanding of a problem-posing pedagogy (to be presented in chapter 2),
and wish to thank Professor Vieira Pinto for permission to cite his work
prior to publication.
L
Chapter 2
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any
level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally
iKirrciive character. This relationship involves a narrating
Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students);
The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality,.,
tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and
petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.
The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static,
compartmentalized and predictable. Or else he expounds on a
topic completely alien to the existential experience of the
students. His task is to ‘fill’ the students with the contents of
his narration - contents which arc detached from reality, dis—
cor.iiected from the totality that engendered them and could
give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness
and become a hollow, alienated and alienating verbosity.
The outstanding characteristic of ‘his narrative education,
the’-, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power,
‘fo-jr times four is sixteen; the capita! of Para is Belem.’ The
student records, memorizes and repeats these phrases without
perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the
true significance of‘capital’ in the affirmation ‘the capital of
Para is Belem,' that is, what Belem means for Para and what
Para means for Brazil.
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to
memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse still, it
turns them into ‘containers', into receptacles to be filled by the
teacher. The more completely he fills the receptacles, the belter a
teacher he is. The more meekly the receptacles permit them
selves io be filled, the better students they arc.
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the
students arc the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.
Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques
£
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47
and ‘makes deposits’ which the students patiently receive,
memorize, and repeat. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students
extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.
They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or
cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is
men themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity,
transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided
system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, men
cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through
’^ntion ,an_d re-invention, JhrougK'ffie TeinessTTrnpatient,
continiiing^ hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the
world, and with each other.
’
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift
bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable
upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting
an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the
ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as
processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students
as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance
absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students, alienated
like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as
justifying the teacher’s existence - but, unlike the slave, they
never discover that they educate the teacher.
JThe raisond'etre of libertarianeducation, on the other hand,
lies m its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin
with the solution of the teacher-studeiTcontra^’tjqn^^
reconciling thc_polcs of the contradiction so that both are
simultaneously teachcrs andstudents.
“k~
This solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking
concept. On the contrary, banking education maintains and
even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes
and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole:
1. The teacher teaches and the students arc taught.
2. The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.
3. The teacher thinks and the students arc thought about.
4. The teacher talks and the students listen - meekly.
i mill iii min
■m
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46
5. The teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined.
6. The teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students
com ply.
7. The teacher acts ;and’ the
' students have the illusion
of acting
tlu ough the action of the teacher.
8. The teacher chooses the programme
content, and the students
(who were not consulted) adapt to it.
9. The teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his
own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the
rreedom of the students.
10. the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the
pupils are mere objects.
It is not surprising that the banking concept of education
regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more
students work al storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less
they develop the critical consciousness which would result
from their intervention in (he world as transformers of that
world. I he more completely they accept the passive role im
posed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world
as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in (hem.
Pie capacity of banking education to minimize or annul the
students creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves
the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the
world revealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use
(heir humanitarianism’ to preserve a profitable situation. Thus
they react almost instinctively against any experiment in educa
tion which stimulates the critical faculties and is not content
with a partial view of reality but is always seeking out (he ties
which link one point to another and one problem to another
indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in ‘changing the
consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which op
presses them’ (Simone de Beauvoir in Lu Pensee de Droite
Aujourd hid) for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to
that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To
achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of
education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action
apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic
0
io
ii
i
i
I
- (
il'
■ I
hI
f
-
I
’v.ti.
‘i
S
It
J//
i
7>48
(JV'Z [rrJM
M d'J i %’ f J
title of ‘welfare recipients’. They are treated as individual
cases, as marginal men who deviate from the general con
figuration of a ‘good, organized, and just’ society. The op
pressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society,
which must therefore adjust these ‘incompetent and lazy’ folk
to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These mar
ginals need to be ‘integrated’, ‘incorporated’ into the healthy
society that they have ‘ forsaken .
The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not marginals,
are not men living J outside’ society. They have always been
inside - insidethe structure ^wfuch, m^£jher^
others ’. The^sofution isnot to ‘integrate’ them into the structure
of oppression, buU£ L^nsform Jhat structiTe soJhatjhey can
become ‘beings 7or themselves’. Such transformatjon, of
course, would .undermine the opprasp^
utilization .of the Ranking concept.J>JL^ucatjonJo^avo idJ:he
threat of student conscientization.
The banking approach to adult education, for example, will
never propose to students that they consider reality critically. It
will deal instead with such vital questions as whether R.oger
gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of
learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the
rabbit. The ‘humanism’ of the banking approach masks the
effort to turn men into automatons - the very negation of their
ontological vocation to be more fully human.
Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or un
knowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank
clerk teachers who do not realize that they arc serving only to
dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves con
tain contradictions about reality. But, sooner or later, these
contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn
against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate re
ality. They may discover through existential experience that their
present wayoflifeisirreconcilablewiththeirvocation to become
, fully human. They may perceive through theirxsdiHiomjMJ^
ality that realltyTTreahy a process, undergoing constajiL.tiqpsToFmatmTirmen'are searchers and their ontological vocation
is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contra
diction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and
r
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49
/hen engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.
But the humanist, revolutionary educator cannot wait for
this possibility to materialize. From the outset, his efforts must
coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking
and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must-be
imbued with a profound trustjn men and their creative_po%er.
To^^ievelH^rmust be a partner of the students jnjus,
relations with them.
The banking concept does not admit to such a partnership and necessarily so. To resolve the teacher-student contradic
tion, to exchange the role of depositor, piescriber, domcsticator,
for the role of student among students would be to undermine
the power of oppression and to serve the cause of liberation.
Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a
dichotomy between man and the world: man is merely in the
world, not with the world or with others; man is spectator, not
re-creator. In this view, man is not a conscious being (corpo
consciente)\ he is rather the possessor of a consciousness, an
empty ‘mind’ passively open to the reception of deposits of
reality from the world outside. For example, my desk, my books,
my coffee cup, all the objects before me - as bits of the world
which surrounds me - would be ‘inside’ me, exactly as I am
inside my study right now. This view makes no distinction
between being accessible to consciousness and entering con
sciousness. The distinction, however, is essential: the objects
which surround me are simply accessible to my consciousness,
not located within it. I am aware of them, but they are not
inside me.
It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness
that the educator’s role is to regulate the way the world enters
into’ the students. His task is to organize a process which
already happens spontaneously, to ‘fill’ the students by making
deposits of information which he considers constitute true
knowledge.1 And since men ‘receive’ the world as passive
1. This concept corresponds to what Sartre calls the ‘digestive’ or
‘nutritive’ concept ol education, in which knowledge is fed by the
teacher to (he students to ‘fill them out’. Sec Jean-Paul Sartre, Une
idde fondamcntale do la phenomdnologic de Husserl: I’intcntionalitd’,
Situations I.
50
ada^^hem?!!^StiH’ and
boause he is more ‘ hr foHFFwTJl
t-jl£2n.2?Pi IS well suited to the nimn^TTr n------
^oseffanquinnrv^r;;;^;
4
o^ressorsha^cF^^^^^^ -dd the
The more comptetcry-TKe7^»"dapn^ ourposec
hich the dominant minority prescribe for them '(thereby
de rivmg them of the right to their own purposes), tie more
1
easily tne minority can continue to prescribe. The theory and
practice of banking education serve this end r
quite efficiently.
Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements 2 the
evaluating ‘knowledge’, the distance between -3 methods for
theinteacher
and
the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything
this readvto-wea: approach serves to obviate thinking.
‘ J
The bank-clerk educator does not realize that there is ™ t
security in his hypertrophied role, that one must seek t<
wth others in solidarity. One cannot impose oneself nor eJn
merely co-exist with one’s students. Solidarity req’uires true
commumcat.on, and the concept by which such an educator s
guided fears and proscribes communication.
Yet only through communication can human life hr.w
meaning. The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the
au thenticity of the students’ thinking. The teacher cannot foink
for h.s students, nor can he impose his thoueht on r
uthentic fomking, thinking thatjs concerned about^S'
do^not take place in ivory-tower
municafioinr THTtHTTjI^th^rh^-n^nfo—^r—0
generated by action upon the world the ‘ n t
7 W1Cn
students to teachers becomes impossible’
bordlnat'<’n of
produces its opposite:‘necrophily’.
P
’ bul lnstcad
While life is characterized by growth in a structured r.
ntr'...................... ..................... ...... ....
students!
L
T: ..... .
,•
■
P E S 10 lO 1 “ and d<=> this to * help ‘ thcir
51
mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to trans
form the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically
as if ail hving persons were things.. .. Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what counts. The necrophilous
person can relate to an object - a flower or a person - only if he
.possesses it; hence a threat to his possession is a threat to himself;
if he loses possession he loses contact with the world. ... He loves
control, and in the act of controlling he kills life.
Oppression - overwhelming control - is necrophilic; it is
nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of
education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also
necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic,
spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into
receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action,
leads men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative
power.
When their efforts to aet responsibly arc frustrated, when they
find themselves unable to use their faculties, men suffer. ‘This
suffering due to impotence is rooted in the very fact that the ‘
human equilibrium has been disturbed’, says Fromm. But the
inability to act which causes men’s anguish also causes them to
reject their impotence, by attempting
I
i
... to restore [their] capacity to act. But can^they], and'how? One
way is to submit to qnd, jdentjfy with a person or grqun having
P°werthis symbolic participation in another persmi^ iTfe? [^en
dlu^n ptactmg^
becomea part of those who act.
Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of
behaviour by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charis
matic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and
effective. The rebellion they express as they emerge in the
historical process is motivated by that desire to act effectively.
The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination
and repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order and social peace (the peace of the elites, that is). Thus they can
condemn-logically, from their point of view - ‘the violence of a
strike by workers and [can] call upon the state in the same ‘
breath to use violence in putting down the strike’ (Niebuhr’s
Moral Man and Immoral Society).
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Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the
credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not
perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the
world of oppression. This accusation is not made in the naive
hope that the dominant elites will thereby simply abandon the
practice. Its objective is to call the attention of true humanists
to the fact that they cannot use the methods of banking educa
tion in the pursuit of liberation, as they would only negate that
pursuit itself. Nor may a revolutionary society inherit these
methods from an oppressor society. The revolutionary society
which practises banking education is either misguided or mis- •
trustful of men. In either event, it is threatened by the spectre of
reaction.
Unfortunately, those who espouse the cause of liberation
are themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which
generates the banking concept, ajxl often do not perceive its
true signiTicance or its dehumanizing power. Paradoxically,
t hen ,_they_ utili^This very Jaslcy ment of^lienation inwhatthjy
consider an effort to liberate^ Indeed, some ‘revolutionaries’
brahd'aT’innocents, dreamers, or even reactionaries those who
would challenge this educational practice. But one does not
liberate men by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the
process of humanization - is not another ‘deposit’ to be made
in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men
upon their world J n order to traiisfoim-lt. Those truly com
mitted to thecause of liberation can accept neither the mechanis
tic concept of consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor
the use of banking methods of domination (propaganda,
slogans - deposits) in the name of liberation.
The truly committed must reject the banking concept in its
entirety, adopting instead a concept of men as conscious beings,
and consciousness as consciousness directed towards the world.
They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and
replace it with the posing of the problems of men in their re
lations with the world. ‘Problem-posing’ education, responding
to the essence of consciousness - intentionality - rejects com
muniques and embodies communication. It epitomizes the
special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious oj, not
only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself in a
Jaspenan ‘split’ - consciousness as consciousness o/consciousness.
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. It is a learning situation in which the
cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act)
intermediates the cognitive actors - teacher on the one hand and
students on the other. Accordingly, the practice of problem
posing education first of all demands a resolution of the teacher
student contradiction. Dialogical relations - indispensable to
the capacity of cognitive actors to cooperate in perceiving the
same cognizable object — are otherwise impossible.
Indeed, problem-posing education, breaking the vertical
patterns characteristic of banking education, can fulfill its
function of being the practice of freedom only if it can over
come the above contradiction. Through dialogue, the teacherof-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist
and a new term emerges: teacher-student with studentsteachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches
but one whobhimself taughdn dialogue wiTfiThTmidtenH; who
111 ’!i^r turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly
responsible for a process in which"all grow? In'this^process,
arguments based on ‘authority’ are no longer valid; in order to
function, authority must be on the side o/freedom, not against
it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. Men
tench each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable
objects which in banking education arc ‘owned’ by the teacher.
fhc banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize
everything) distinguishes two stages in the action oftheeducator.
During the first, he cognizes a cognizable object while he pre
pares his lessons in his study or his laboratory; during the
second, he expounds to his students on that object. The students
arc not called upon to know, but to memorize the contents
narrated by the teacher. Nor do the students practise any act of
cognition, since the object towards~wTi]dTTEat act should be
diiccted is the property of the teacher rather than a medium
evoking tfig critical rr.flrctinn of.both Tettcher and students
Hence in the name of the ‘preservatioiTofcuiture and know^
ledge we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge
nor true culture.
-) oo
09800
—
54
The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the
activity ol the teacher-student: he is not ‘cognitive’ at one point
and ‘narrative’ at ano titer. He is alwa^ ‘cognitive’, whether
preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with the students.
He does not regard cognizable objects as his private property,
but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In
this way, the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms_his
reflections in the reflectiorT'oTthe's.tudents. The students - no
longer docile listeners - are now critical co-investigators in
dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to
the stuoents tor their consideration, and re-examines his earlier
consideratipnsIasdhQSludems express their own. The role of the
Pro’3len}_;P£si13g educator is to create, together with thesFudents,
the condi'ions under which knowledge at the level of the doxci
is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the io^os;
Whereas banking education anaesthetizes and inhibits creative
power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling
of reaIity. The former atte_mots. to maintain .tjiejr/^^nyd/? of
sF*
> I he latter strives for the emergence of con- sciousness and critical intervention in reality.
Students, as fKey*arc increasingly faced with problems re
lating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel
increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge.
Because^hey apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other
problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question,
the resultmgcomprehension'tciuls to be increasingly critical and
^^’S^on^smntlyjcss alienated. Their response to the challenge
evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and
gradually thestudents come to regard themselves as committed.
Education as the practice of freedom - as opposed to educa
tion as the practice of domination - denies that man is abstract,
isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also
denies that the world exists as a reality apart from men. Authcntic reflation considers neither abstract man nor the~’.vorid
Witliout muih-but njien in their relations with the world. In these
relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: conscious
ness neither precedes the world nor follows it. 'La conscience et
le monde sont dormes d'un meme coup; exterieur par essence a
la conscience^ le monde est, par essence relatif d elle\ writes
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Sartre. In one of our culture circles in Chile, the group was
discussing (based on a codification)3 the anthropological con
cept of culture. In the midst-of the discussion, a peasant who by.
banking standards was completely ignorant said: ‘Now I see
that without man there is no world.’ When the educator re
sponded: ‘Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all the men
on earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together
with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars ... wouldn’t all
this be a world?’ ‘Oh no,’ the peasant replied emphatically.
‘There would be no one to say: “This is a world”.’
The peasant wished to express the idea that there would be
lacking the consciousness of the world which necessarily implies
the world of consciousness. T’ cannot exist without a ‘not I’. In
turn, the ‘not I’ depends on that existence. The world which
brings consciousness into existence becomes the world^/ThaT
consciousness. Hence the previously cited affirmation of Sartre:
La conscience el le monde sont dormes d'un meme coup"
As men, simultaneously reflecting on themselves and on the
world, increase the scope of their perception, they begin to
direct their observations towards previously inconspicuous
phenomena. Husserl writes:
In perception properly so-called, as an explicit awareness [Gewahren],
I am turned towards the object, to the paper, for instance. I appre
hend it as being this here and now. The apprehension is a singling out,
every object having a background in experience. Around and about
the paper lie books, pencils, ink-well and so forth, and these in a
certain sense arc also ‘perceivedperceptually there, in the ‘field of
intuition’; but whilst I was turned towards the paper there was no
turning in their direction, nor any apprehending of them, not even
in a secondary sense. They appeared and yet were not singled out,
were not posited on their own account. Every perception of a thing
has such a zone of background intuitions or background awareness,
if ‘intuiting’ already includes the stale of being turned towards, and
this also is a ‘conscious experience’, or more briefly a ‘consciousness
of’ all indeed that in point of fact lies in the co-perceived objective
background.
That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived
in its deeper implications (if indeed it was perceived at all)
3. See chapter 3. (Translator's note.')
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begins to ‘stand out’, assuming the character of a problem and
therefore of challenge. Thus, men begin to single out elements
from their ‘background awarenesses’ and to reflect upon them.
These elements are now objects of men's consideration, and, as
such, objects of their action and cognition.
In problem-posing education, men develop their power to
perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and
in_
J™* thern^Ive^ihey.conie tosee the world noTas
a static reality, but as a_ realityjn^rpces^jnjransfprmation.
Although the dialectical relations of men with the world exist
independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether
or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the form of
ac tion men adop t is t o_ a large ex ten t. aJh net i on. ,p f how’Jthey
perceiveThemselves in the world. Hence, the teacher-student and
the stiidents-teachers refiectj;imu 11aneousTy_bn themseives and
the world without dichotomizing this jeflection^from action,
and thus estabjish an authentic form of thought and action.
Once again, the two educational concepts and practices
under analysis come into conflict. Banking education (for
obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal
certain facts which explain the way men exist in the world;
problem-posing education sets itself the task of de-mythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing
education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cog
nition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students
as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them
critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and
domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the in
tentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the
world, thereby denying men their ontological and historical
vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing
education bases itself on creativity and'stimulatcTtruTreflStlo’n
ariaTction upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of
men as beings who are authentic only when engaged in^inpuiry
and creative transformation. IrTsum: banking theory and
p racficc, as i m mo b i I i zi ng a n d fixating forces, fail to acknowledge
men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice
take man’s historicity as their starting point.
Problem-posing education affirms men as beings in the pro
57
cess of becoming - as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and
with a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in contrast to other
a_nimals who are unfinished, but not historical, men know them
selves to be unfinished; they are aware of their incompleteness.
In this incompleteness and this awareness lie the very roots of
education as an exclusively human manifestation. The un
finished character of men and the transformational character of
reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.
Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order
to be, it must become. Its ‘duration’ (in the Bergsonian meaning
of the word) is found in the interplay of the opposites per
manence and change. The banking method emphasizes per
manence and becomes reactionary; problem-posing education
— which accepts neither a ‘well-behaved’ present nor a pre
determined future - roots itself in the dynamic present and
becomes revolutionary.
Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity. Hence
it is prophetic (and, as such, hopeful), and so corresponds to the
historical nature of man. Thus, it affirms men as beings who
transcend themselves, who move forward and look ahead, for
whom immobility represents a fatal threat, for whom looking at
the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly
what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the
future. Hence, it identifies with the movement which engages
men as beings aware of their incompleteness - an historical
movement which has its point of departure, its subjects and its
objective.
The point of departure of the movenjent lies in men themmen4o not exist apart from the world, apart
T^J'lYx-lhe.move.ment mustbegin with the men-world
relations hip. Accordingly, the point of departure must ahyays
‘here and now’, which consfitutes the situatL9.n.7w.,i.h,n which they are submerged, from which they emerge,
and jn which they intervene. Only by starting from this situation
- which determines their perception of it - can they begin,to
moyc._ To_j1o.this authentically they must perceive their state
_lll2L^aled_and unalterable, but merely as limiting - and.thereforc challenging. _
Whereas the banking method directly or indirectly reinforces
53
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mens fatalistic perception of their situation, the problem
posing method presents this very situation to them as a problem.
As the situatLO-iLbecomes the object of their cognition, the-rrafveor magical perception which produced their fatalism gives way
to perception which is able to perceive itself even as it perceives
reality, and can thus be critically objective about that reality.
A deepened consciousness of their situation leads men to
apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of
transformation. Resignation gives way to the drive for trans
formation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves in
control. If men, as historical beings necessarily engaged with
other men in a movement of inquiry, did not control that move
ment, it would be (and is) a violation of men’s humanity. Any
?Ltua.t.1£n.in
me9 prevent others from cngagingTn
the process o 1 inquiry -s one
e meareused are ho t
important; to alienate men from their own decision-making is to
change them into objects.
This movement of inquiry must be directed towards humani
zation - man s historical vocation. The pursuit of full humanity,
however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism,
but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold
in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed.
No one can be authentically human while he prevents others
irom being so. The attempt to be more human, individualistically, leads to having more, egotistically: a form of dehumaniza
tion. Not that it is not fundamental to have in order to be
human. Precisely because it A necessary, some men's having
must not be allowed to constitute an obstacle to others’ having,
to consolidate the power of the former to crush the latter.
Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating
praxis, posits as fundamental that men subjected to domination
must fight for their emancipation. To that end, it enables
teachers and students to become subjects of the educational
process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating
intellectualism; it also enables men to overcome (heir false
perception of reality. The world - no longer something to be
described with deceptive words - becomes the object of that
transforming action by men which results in their humanization.
Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve (he
59
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interests of the oppressor. No oppressive order could permit the
oppressed to begin to question: Why? While only a revolut i o n a ry socre t y can ca rry o u 11 hi s ed uca t i o n i n systemai icier ms,
the revolutionary leaders need not take full power before they
can employ the method. In the revolutionary process, the
leaders cannot utilize the banking method as an interim measure,
justified on grounds of expediency, with the intention of Inter
behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must be
revolutionary - that is to say, dialogical - from the outset.
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hapter 3
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As we attempt to analyse dialogue as a human phenomenon,
we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself:
the word. But the word is more than just an instrument which
makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its con
stituent elements. Within the word we find two dimensions,
reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is
sacrificed - even in part - the other immediately suffers. There
is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis.1 Thus, to
speak a true word is to transform the world.2
An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform
reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constituent
elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action,
reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed
into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating
‘blah’. It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce
the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commit
ment to transform, and there is no transformation without
action.
On the other hand, if action is emphasized exclusively, to the
detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism.
The latter - action for action’s sake - negates the true praxis
and makes dialogue impossible. Either dichotomy, by creating
unauthentic forms of existence, also creates unauthentic forms
of thought, which reinforce the original dichotomy.
Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by
1. Action
1 word = work = praxis
Reflection )
Sacrifice of action = verbalism
Sacrifice of reflection. = activism
2. Some of these reflections emerged as a result of conversations with
ProfessorErnani Maria Fiori.
false words, but only by true words, with which men transform
the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it.
Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a
problem and requires of them a new naming. Men are not built
in silence,3 but in word, in work, in action-reflection.
But while to say the true word - which is work, which is
praxis - is to transform the world, saying that word is not the
privilege of some few men, but the right of every man. Con
sequently, no one can say a true word alone - nor can he say it
for another, in a prescriptive act which robs others of their
words.
Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the
world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot
occur between those who want to name the world and those
who do not want this naming - between (hose who deny other
men the right to speak their word and those whose right to
speak has been denied them. Those who have been denied their
primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim- this
right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing
aggression.
If it is in speaking their word that men transform the world
by naming it, dialogue imposes itself as the way in which men
achieve significance as men. Dialogue is thus an existential
necessity. And since dialogue is the encounter in which the
united reflection and action of the dialoguers arc addressed to
the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this
dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s ‘deposit
ing’ ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of
ideas to be ‘consumed’ by the participants in the discussion.
Nor yet is it a hostile, polemical argument between men who are
committed neither to the naming of the world, nor to the search
for truth, but rather to the imposition of their own truth. Be
cause dialogue is an encounter among men who name the
world, it must not be a situation where some men name on
3. I obviously do not refer to the silence of profound meditation, in
which men only apparently leave the world, withdrawing from it in order
to consider it in its totality, and thus remaining with it. But this type of
retreat is only authentic when the meditator is ‘bathed’ in reality; not
when the retreat signifies contempt for the world and Hight from it, in a
kind of ‘ historical schizophrenia
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behalf of others. It is an act of creation; it must not serve as a
crafty instrument for the domination of one man by another.
The domination implicit in dialogue is that of the world by those
who enter into dialogue, it is the conquest of the world for the
liberation of men.
Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound
love for the world and for men. The naming of the world, which
is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not
infused with love.4 Love is at the same time the foundation of
dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of
responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domina
tion. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the
dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an
act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to other men.
No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is
commitment to their cause - the cause of liberation. And this
commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of
bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it
must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate
other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love. Only by abolish
ing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love
which that situation made impossible. If I do not love the world
- if I do not love life - if I do not love men - 1 cannot enter into
dialogue.
On the other hand, dialogue cannot exist without humility.
The naming of the world, through which men constantly re
create that world, cannot be an act of arrogance. Dialogue, as
4. I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must per
ceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an
act oflovc. For me the revolution, which is not possible without a theory
of revolution - and therefore science -, is not irreconcilable with love.
On the contrary: the revolution is made by men to achieve their human
ization. What, indeed, is the deeper motive which moves men to become
revolutionaries, but the dehumanization of man 7 The distortion imposed
on the word ‘love’ by the capitalist world cannot prevent the revolution
from being essentially loving in character, nor can it prevent the revolu
tionaries from affirming their love of life. Guevara (while admitting
the ‘risk of seeming ridiculous’) was not afraid to affirm it. He is quoted in
Venceremos-. ‘Let me say. with the risk of appearing ridiculous, (hat the
true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to
think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality. ’
63
the encounter of men addressed to the common task of learning
and acting, is broken if the parties (or one of them) lack
humil ity. How can I enter into a d i a I ogueTi f Falways projectignorance onto others and never perceive my own? How can I
enter into dialogue if 1 regard myself as a case apart from other
men - mere ‘its’ in whom I cannot recognize other ‘Is’? How
can I enter into dialogue if 1 consider myself a member of the
in-group of ‘ pure’ men, the owners of truth and knowledge, for
whom all non-members are ‘these people’ or ‘the great un
washed’? If I start from the premise that naming the world is
the task of an elite and that the presence of the people in history
is a sign of deterioration which is to be avoided, how can I hold
a dialogue? Or if I am closed to - and even offended by - the
contribution of others; if 1 am tormented and weakened by the
possibility of being displaced, how can there be dialogue?
Self-sufficiency is incompatible with dialogue. Men. who lack
humility (or have lost it) cannot come to the people, cannot be
their partners in naming the world. Someone who cannot ack
nowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long
way to go before he can reach the point of encounter. At the
point of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses nor per
fect sages; there are only men who are attempting, together, to
learn more than they now know.
Dialogue further requires an intense faith in man, faith in his
power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in his
vocation to be more fully human (which is not the privilege of
an elite, but the birthright of all men). Faith in man is an a
priori requirement for dialogue; the ‘dialogical man’ believes
in other men even before he meets them face to face. His faith,
however, is not naive. The ‘dialogical man’ is critical and knows
that although it is within the power of men to create and trans
form in a concrete situation of alienation men may be impaired
in the use of that power. Far from destroying his faith in
man, however, this possibility strikes him as a challenge to
which he must respond. He is convinced that the power to
create and transform, even when thwarted in concrete situa
tions, tends to be reborn. And that rebirth can occur - not
gratuitously, but in and through the struggle for liberation in slave labour being superseded by emancipated labour which
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gives zest to life. Without this faith in man, dialogue is a farce
which inevitably degenerates into paternalistic manipulation.
Founding itself upon love, humility and faith, dialogue be
comes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between
the participants is the logical consequence. It would be a con
tradiction in terms if dialogue - loving, humble and full of
faith - did not produce a climate of mutual trust, which leads
the people involved into ever closer partnership in the naming
of the world. Conversely, such trust is obviously absent in the
anti-dialogics of the banking method of education. Whereas
faith in man is an a priori requirement for dialogue, trust is
established by dialogue. Should it fail, it will be seen that the
preconditions were lacking. False love, false humility and feeble
faith in man cannot create trust. Trust is contingent on the evi
dence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete
intentions; it cannot exist if that party’s words do not coincide
v/ith his actions. To say one thing and do another - to take one’s
own word lightly - cannot inspire trust. To glorify democracy
and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism
and to negate man is a lie.
Nor yet can dialogue exist without hope. Hope is rooted in
men’s incompleteness, from which they move out in constant
search - a search which can be carried out only in communion
with other men. Hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying
the world and fleeing from it. The dehumanization resulting
from an unjust order is not a cause for despair but for hope,
leading to the incessant pursuit of the humanity which is
denied by injustice. Hope, however, does not consist in folding
one’s arms and waiting. As long as I fight, I am moved by hope;
and if I fight with hope, then I can wait. As the encounter of
men seeking to be more fully human, dialogue cannot be carried
on in a climate of hopelessness. If the participants expect
nothing to come of their efforts, their encounter will be empty
and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious.
Finally, true dialogue cannot exist unless it involves critical
thinking - thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity
between the world and men admitting of no dichotomy between
them - thinking which perceives reality as process and trans
formation, rather than as a static entity - thinking which docs
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not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself
in temporality without fear of the risks involved. Critical
thinking contrasts with naive thinking, which sees ‘historical
time as a weight, a stratification of the acquisitions and experi
ences of the past’,5 from which the present should emerge
normalized and ‘well-behaved’. For the naive thinker, the
important thing is accommodation to this normalized ‘today’.
For the critic, the important thing is the continuing transforma
tion of reality, for the sake of the continuing humanization of
men. In the words of Pierre Furter:
The goal will no longer be to eliminate the risks of temporality by
clutching to guaranteed space, but rather to temporalize space. ...
The universe is revealed to me not as space, imposing a massive
presence to which I can only adapt, but as a scope, a domain which
takes shape as I act upon it.
For naive thinking, the goal is precisely to hold fast to this
guaranteed space and adjust to it. By thus denying temporality,
it denies itself as well.
Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also cap
able of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is
no communication, and without communication there can be
no true education. Education which is able to resolve the con
tradiction between teacher and student takes place in a situation
in which both address their act of cognition to the object by
which they are mediated. Thus, the dialogical character of edu
cation as the practice of freedom does not begin when the
teacher-student meets the studcnts-tcachers in a pedagogical
situation, but rather when the former first asks himself what
his dialogue with the latter will be about. And preoccupation
with the content of dialogue is really preoccupation with the
programme content of education.
For the anti-dialogical banking educator, the question of
content simply concerns the programme about which he will
discourse to his students; and he answers his own question, bv
organizing his own programme. For the dialogical, problem
posing teacher-student, (he programme content of education is
neither a gift nor an imposition - bits of information to be
5. From the letter of a friend.
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deposited in the students - but rather the organized, systemat
ized, and developed * re-presentation’ to indivi duals of the
things about.which they want to know more.-*
Authentic education is not carried on by A for B or by A
about B, but rather by A with B, mediated by the world - a
world which impresses and challenges both parties, giving rise
to views or opinions about it. These views, impregnated with
anxieties, doubts, hopes, or hopelessness, imply significant
themes on the basis of which the programme content of educa
tion can be built. In its desire to create an ideal model of the
‘good man’, a naively conceived humanism often overlooks the
concrete, existential, present situation of real men. Authentic
humanism, in Pierre Hurter’s words, ‘consists in permitting the
emergence of the awareness of our full humanity, as a condition
and as an obligation, as a situation and as a project’. We simply
cannot go to the workers - urban or peasant7 - in the banking
style, to give them ‘knowledge’ or to impose upon them the
. model of the ‘good man’ contained in a programme whose
content we have ourselves organized. Many political and edu
cational plans have failed because their authors designed them
according to their own personal views of reality, never once
taking into account (except as mere objects of their action) the
men-in-a-situation towards whom their programme was ostens
ibly directed.
For the truly humanist educator and the authentic revolu
tionary, the object of action is the reality to be transformed by
them together with other men - not other men themselves. The
oppressors arc the ones who act upon men to indoctrinate them
and adjust them to a reality which must remain untouched.
Unfortunately, however, in their desire to obtain the support of
the people for revolutionary action, revolutionary leaders often
6. In a long conversation with Malraux, Mao Tse-tung declared, ‘ You
know I’ve proclaimed fora long time: wc must (each the masses clearly
what wc have received from them confusedly.’ {Anti memoirs). This
affirmation contains an entire dialogical theory of how to construct the
programme content ofeducation, which cannot be elaborated according to
what the educator thinks best for his students.
7. The latter, usually submerged in a colonial context, are almost
umbilically linked to the world of nature, in relation to which they feel
themselves to be component parts rather (han shapers.
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fall for the banking line of planning a programme content
from the top down. They approach the peasanLor urban masses
with projects which may correspond to their own view of the
world, but not to that of the people.8 They forget that their
fundamental objective is to fight alongside the people for the
recovery of the people’s stolen humanity, not to ‘win the people
over’ to their side. Such a phrase does not belong in the vocab
ulary of revolutionary leaders, but in that of the oppressor.
The revolutionary’s role is to liberate, and be liberated, wfth the
people - not to_wjn th.ernjover.
In-their political activity, the dominant elites utilize the
banking concept to encourage passivity in the oppressed, cor
responding with the latter’s ‘submerged’ state of consciousness
and take advantage of that passivity to ‘fill’ that consciousness
with slogans which create even more fear of-freedom. This
practice is incompatible with a truly liberating course of action
which, by presenting the oppressors’ slogans as a problem,
helps the oppressed to ‘eject’ those slogans from within them
selves. After all, the task of the humanists is surely not that of
pitting their slogans against the slogans of the oppressors,
with the oppressed as the testing ground, ‘housing’ the slogans
of first one group and then the other. On the contrary, the task
of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of
the fact that as dual beings, ‘housing’ the oppressors within
themselves, they cannot be truly human.
8. ‘Our cultural workers must serve the people with great enthusiasm
and devotion, and they must link themselves with the masses, not divorce
themselves from the masses. In order to do so, they must act in accord
ance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the
masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any in
dividual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the
masses need a certain change, but subjectively they arc not yet conscious
of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such
cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until,
through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need
and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate
ourselves from the masses .... There are two principles here: one is the
actual needs of the masses rather than what wc fancy they need, and the
other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own minds
instead of our making up their minds for them.’ From the Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung.
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This task implies that revolutionary leaders do not go to the
people in order to bring them a message of ‘salvation*, but in
order to come to know through dialogue with them both their
objective situation and their awareness of that situation - the
various levels of perception of themselves and of the world in
which and with which they exist. One cannot expect positive
results from an educational or political action programme
which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by
the people. Such a programme constitutes cultural invasion,9
good intentions notwithstanding.
The^starting point for organizing the programme contend of
education or polideal action must be^the present, existential,
concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the~peopie.
Utilizing certain basic contradictions, we must pose this exis
tential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem
which challenges them and requires a response - not just at
the intellectual level, but at the level of action.10
We must never merely discourse on the present situation,
must never provide the people with programmes which have
little or nothing to do with their own preoccupations, doubts,
hopes, and fears - programmes which at times in fact increase
the fears of the oppressed consciousness. It is not our role to
speak to the people about our own view of the world, nor to
attempt to impose that view on them, but rather to dialogue
with the people about their view and ours. We must realize
that their view of the world, manifested variously in their
action, reflects their situation in the world. Educational and
political action which is not critically aware of this situation
runs the risk either of ‘banking’ or of preaching in the desert.
Often, educators and politicians speak and are not understood
because their language is not attuned to the concrete situation
of the men they address. Accordingly, their talk is just alienated
and alienating rhetoric. The language of the educator or the
politician (and it seems more and more clear that the latter
9. This point will be analysed in detail in chapter 4.
10. It is as self-contradictory for true humanists to use the banking
method as it would be for Rightists toengageinproblem-posingeducation.
(The latter are always consistent - they never use a problem-posing
pedagogy.)
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must also become an educator, in the broadest sense of the
word), like the language of the people, cannot exist without
thought; and neither language nor thought can exist without
a structure to which they refer. In order to communicate effectively, educator and politician musTunderstancTTIie structural"
conditions_in_which the, ihciught_and language of the people
are dialectically framed,
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It is to the reality which mediates men, and to the perception
of that reality held by educators and people, that we must go
to find the programme content of education. The investigation
ol what I have termed the people’s ‘thematic universe’11 - the
complex o£their ‘generative themes’ - inaugurates the dialogue
61 education as the practice ofjreedom. The methodology of
that investigation must likewise be dialogical, providing the
opportunity both to discover generative themes and to stimulate
people’s awareness in regard to these themes. Consistent with
the Hberating purpose of dialogical education, the objecTof the
investigation is not men (as if men were anatomical fragments),
J>ut rather the thought-language men use to refer to reality, the
levSTs at which they perceive that reality^ and their view of the
world^which is the source of their generative themes.
Before describing a ‘generative“Theme’ more"*precisely
(which will also clarify what is meant by a ‘minimum thematic
universe’) it seems to me essential to present a few preliminary
reflections. The concept of a generative theme is neither an
arbitrary invention nor a working hypothesis that has to be
proved. If it were a hypothesis to be proved, the initial investi
gation would seek not to ascertain the nature of the theme,
but rather the very existence or non-existence of themes them
selves. In that event, before attempting to understand the
theme in its richness, its significance, its plurality, its translormations (sec my Cultural Action for Freedom}, and its
historical composition, we would first have to verify whether
or not it is an objective fact; only then could we proceed to
apprehend it. Although an attitude of critical doubt is legitim
ate, it docs appear possible to verify the reality of the generative
theme - not only through one’s own existential experience, but
II. The expression ‘meaningful thcmatics’ is used with the same
connotation.
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also through critical consideration of the nien-world relation_ ship and the relationships between men_irnplicit in the former.
This point deserves more attention. One may well remember
- trite as it seems - that, of the uncompleted beings, man is the
only one to treat not only his actions but his very self as the
•> object of his reflection; this capacity distinguishes him from the
animals, which are unable to separate themselves from their
. activity and thus are unable to reflect upon it. In this appar
ently superficial distinction lie the boundaries which delimit
the action of each in his life space. Because the animals’ activity
is an extension of themselves, the results of that activity are also
inseparable from themselves: animals can neither set objectives
not infuse their transformation of nature with any significance
beyond itself. Moreover, the ‘decision’ to perform this activity
belongs not to them but to their species. Animals are, accord
ingly, fundamentally ‘beings in themselves’.
Unable to decide for themselves, unable to objectify either
themselves or their activity, lacking objectives which they them
selves have set, living ‘submerged’ in a world to which they
can give no meaning, lacking a ‘tomorrow’ and a ‘today’
because they exist in an overwhelming present, animals are
ahistorical. Their ahistorical life does not occur in the ‘world’,
taken in its strict meaning; for the animal, the world does not
constitute a ‘not-1’ which could set him apart as an ‘I’. The
human world, which is historical, serves as a mere prop for the
‘being in itself’. Animals are not challenged by the configura
tion which confronts them; they are merely stimulated. Their
life is not one of risk-taking, for they are not aware of taking
risks. Risks are not challenges perceived upon reflection, but
merely ‘noted’ by the signs which indicate them; they accord
ingly do not require decision-making responses.
Consequently, animals cannot commit themselves. Their
ahistorical condition docs not permit them to ‘take on’ life.
Because they do not ‘take it on’, they cannot construct it; and
if they do not construct it, they cannot transform its configura
tion. Nor can they know themselves to be destroyed by life,
Tor they cannot expand (heir ‘prop’ world into a meaningful,
symbolic world which includes culture and history. As a result,
animals do not ‘animalize’ their configuration in order to
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animalize themselves - nor do they ‘de-animalize’ themselves.
Even in the forest, they remain ‘beings-in-themselves ’, as
animal-like there as in the zoo.
In contrast, men are aware of their activity and the world in
which they are situated. They act in function of the objectives
which they propose, have the seat of their decisions located in
themselves and in their relations with the world and with
others, and infuse the world with their creative presence by
means of the transformation they effect upon it. Unlike animals,
they not only live but exist;12 and their existence is historical.
Animals live out their lives on an atemporal, flat, uniform
‘prop’; men exist in a world which they are constantly re
creating and transforming. For animals, ‘here’ is only a habitat
with which they enter into contact; for men, ‘here’ signifies
not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.
Strictly speaking, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘there’, ‘tomorrow’, and
‘yesterday’ do not exist for the animal, whose life, lacking self
consciousness, is totally determined. Animals cannot surmount
the limits imposed by the ‘here’, the ‘now’, or the ‘there’.
Men, however, because they are aware of themselves and thus
of the world - because they arc conscious beings - exist in a
dialectical relationship between the determination of limits and
their own freedom. As they separate themselves from the world,
which they objectify, as they separate themselves from their own
activity, as they locate the seat of their decisions in themselves
and in their relations with the world and others, men overcome
the situations which limit them: the ‘limit-situations’.13
Once perceived by men as fetters, as obstacles to their liberation,
these situations stand out in relief from the background,
12. In the English language, the terms ‘live’ and ‘exist’ have assumed
implications opposite to their etymological origins. As used here, ‘live’
is the more basic term, implying only survival; ‘exist’ implies a deeper
involvement in the process of’becoming’.
13. Professor Alvaro Vieira Pinto analyses with clarity the problem of
‘limit-situations’, using the concept without the pessimistic aspect
originally found in Jaspers. Eor Vieira Pinto, the ‘limit-situations’ are
not ’the impassable boundaries where possibilities end, but the real
boundaries where all possibilities begin’; they are not ‘the frontier which
separates being from nothingness, but the frontier which separates being
from being more’.
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revealing their true nature as concrete historical dimensions
of a given reality. Men respond to the challenge with actions
which Vieira Pinto calls ‘limit-acts’: those directed at negating
and overcoming, rather than passively accepting, the ‘given’.
Thus, it is not the limit-situations in and of themselves
which create a climate of hopelessness, but rather how they are
perceived by men at a given historical moment: whether they
appear as fetters or as insurmountable barriers. As critical
perception is embodied in action, a climate of hope and con
fidence develops which leads men to attempt to overcome the
limit-situations. This objective can be achieved only through
action upon the concrete, historical reality in which limit
situations historically are found. As reality is transformed and
these situations are superseded, new ones will appear, which in
turn will evoke new limit-acts.
The prop world of animals contains no limit-situations, due
to its ahistorical character. Sfmilarly, animals lack the ability
to exercise limit-acts, w'hich require a decisive attitude towards
the world: separation from and objectification of the world in
order to transform it. Organically bound to their prop, animals
do not distinguish between themselves and the world. Accord
ingly, animals are not limited by limit-situations - which are
historical - but rather by the entire prop. And the appropriate
role for animals is not to relate to their prop (in that event, the
prop would be a world), but to adapt to it. Thus, when animals
‘produce’ a nest, a hive, or a burrow, they are not creating
products which result from ‘limit-acts’, that is, transforming
responses. Their productive activity is subordinated to the
satisfaction of a physical necessity which is simply stimulating,
rather than challenging. ‘An animal’s product belongs immedi
ately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his
product,’ says Marx in Dirk Struik’s edition of his 1844 manu
scripts.
Only products which result from the activity of a being but
do not belong to its physical body (though these products may
bear its seal), can give a dimension of meaning to the context,
which thus becomes a world. A being capable of such produc
tion (who thereby is necessarily aware of himself, is a ‘being
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for himself ) could no longer be if he were not in the process of
being in the world with which he relates; just as the world would
no longer exist if this being did not exist.
The difference between animals - who (because their activity
does not constitute limit-acts) cannot create products detached
from themselves - and men - who through their action upon the
world create the realm of culture and history - is that only the
latter are beings of the praxis. Only men are praxis - the praxis
which, as the reflection and action which truly transform reality,
is I he source of knowledge and creation. Animal activity, which
occurs without a praxis, is not creative; man’s transforming
activity is.
It is as transforming and creative beings that men, in their
permanent relations with reality, produce not only material
goods - tangible objects - but also social institutions, ideas, and
concepts.14 Through their continuing praxis, men simultan
eously create history and become historical-social beings.
Because — in contrast to animals - men can tri-dimensionalize
time into the past, the present, and the future, their history, in
function of their own creations, develops as a constant process
of transformation within which epochal units materialize.
These epochal units are not closed periods of time, static com
partments within which men are confined. Were this the case, a
fundamental condition of history - its continuity — would dis
appear. On the contrary, epochal units interrelate in the dyn
amics of historical continuity.15
An epoch is characterized by a complex of ideas, concepts,
hopes, doubts, values, and challenges in dialectical interaction
with their opposites, striving towards fulfilment. The concrete
resp resent at ion of many of these ideas, values, concepts and
hopes, as well as the obstacles which impede man’s full human
ization, constitute the (hemes of that epoch. These themes imply
others which are opposing or even antithetical; they also indi
cate tasks to be carried out and fulfilled. Thus, historical
themes arc never isolated, independent, disconnected, or static;
they are always interacting dialectically with their opposites.
14. Regarding (his point, sec Karel Kosik’s Dialectica de lo Concreto.
15. On the question of historical epochs, see Hans Frcycr, Teoria de
la Epoca Actual.
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Nor can these themes be found anywhere except in the menworld relationship. The complex of interacting themes of an
epoch constitutes its * thematic universe*;
Confronted by this ‘universe of themes’ in dialectical con
tradiction, men take equally contradictory positions: some
work to maintam the structures, others to change them. As
antagonism deepens between themes which are the expression
of reality, there is a tendency for the themes and for reality
itself to be mythicized, establishing a climate of irrationality and
sectarianism. This climate threatens to drain the themes of their
deeper significance and to deprive them of their characteristic
ally dynamic aspect. In such a situation, myth-creating irration
ality itself becomes a fundamental theme. Its opposing theme,
the critical and dynamic view of the world, strives to unveil
reality, unmask its mythicization, and achieve a full realization
of the human task: the pmmanent transformation of reality in
favour of the liberation of men.
In the last analysis, the themes™ both contain and 'are con
tained in limit-situations', the tasks they imply require limit-acts.
When the themes are concealed by the limit-situations and thus
are not clearly perceived, the corresponding tasks - mens’
responses in the form of historical action - can be neither
authentically nor critically fulfilled. In this situation, men arc
unable to transcend the limit-situations to discover that there
lies beyond these situations - and in contradiction to them an untested feasibility.
In brief, fimit-situations imply the existence both of persons
who are directly or indirectly served by these situajjpns^and of
those who are negated and curbed by them. Once theJkiUcr
come to perceive these situations as the frontier between being
and'being more h u ma n, raTficrt ha ifbet ween being a^Td noThingness, theynbegin to direct their increasingly criticalI.actions
towards achieving the untested feasibility irnj^iicit in that per
ception. On the other hand, those who are served by the present
lifffiTsituation regard the untested feasibility as a threatening
16. I have termed these themes ‘generative’ because (however they
are comprehended and whatever action they may evoke) they contain
the possibility of unfolding into again as many themes, which in their
turn call for new tasks to be fulfilled.
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limit-situation which must not be allowed to materialize, and
act to maintain the status quo. Consequently, liberating actions
in an historical milieu must correspond not only to the genera
tive themes but to the way in which these themes are perceived.
This requirement in turn implies another; the investigation of
meaningful thematics.
Generative themes can be located in concentric circles,
moving from the general to the particular. The broadest epochal’
unit, which includes a diversified range of units and sub-units continental, regional, national, and so forth - contains themes
of a universal character. I consider the fundamental theme of
9llr eP0Ch to be thatof domination. This implies that the~objeejive to be achieved is liberation, its opposite theme. It is that
tormenting ‘themination’ which gives our epoch the anthrop
ological character mentioned earlier. In order to achieve
humanization, which presupposes the elimination of dehuman
izing oppression, it is absolutely necessary to surmount the
limit-situations in which men are reduced to things.
Within the smaller circles, we find themes and limit-situations
characteristic of societies (on the same continent or on different
continents) which, through these themes and limit-situations,
share historical similarities. For example, underdevelopment,’
which cannot be understood apart from the relationship of
dependency, represents a limit-situation characteristic of soci
eties of the Third World. The task implied by this limit
situation is to overcome the contradictory relationship between
these ‘object ’-societies and the metropolitan societies; this task
constitutes the untested feasibility for the Third World.
Within the broader epochal unit, any specific society con
tains, in addition to the universal, continental, or historically
similar themes, its own particular themes,'its own limit-situa
tions. Within yet smaller circles, thematic diversifications can
be found within the same society, divided into areas and sub
areas, all of which are related to the societal whole. These
constitute epochal sub-units. For example, within the same
national unit one can find the contradiction of the ‘coexistence
of the non-contemporaneous’.
Within these sub-units, national themes may or may not be
perceived in their true significance. They may simply be felt -
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sometimes not even that. But the non-existence of themes within
the sub-units is absolutely impossible. Thejact that individuals
in a certain area do not perceive a generative theme, or perceive
1T in a distorted way, may"onfy reveal* a limit-situation of
oppression in which men are still submerged.^
~ In general, a dominated consciousness which has not yet
perceived a limit-situation in its totality apprehends only its
epiphenomena and transfers to the latter the inhibiting force
which is the property of the limit-situation.17 This fact is of
great importance for the investigation of generative themes.
When men lack a critical understanding of their reality, appre
hending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting
constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that
reality. To know it truly, they would have to reverse their start
ing point: they would need to have a total vision of the context
in order subsequently to separate and isolate its constituent
elements and by.means of this analysis to achieve a clearer
perception of the whole.
Equally appropriate for the methodology of thematic investi
gation and for problem-posing education is this effort to
present significant dimensions of an individual s contextual
reality, the analysis of which will make It possible for him to
recognize the interaction of the various components. Meanwhile
the significant dimensions, which in their turn consist of parts
in interaction, should be perceived as dimensions of total
reality. In this way, a critical analysis of a significant existential
dimension makes possible a new, critical attitude towards the
limit-situations. The perception and comprehension of reality
are rectified and acquire new depth. When carried out with a
methodology of conscientization, the investigation of the gen-
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behaviour, although in a different way from the peasant. Their fear of
freedom leads them to erect defence mechanisms and rationalizations
which conceal the fundamental, emphasize the fortuitous, and deny con
crete reality. In the face of a problem whose analysis would lead to the
uncomfortable perception of a limit-situation, their tendency is to remain
on the periphery of the discussion and resist any attempt to reach the
heart of the question. They are even annoyed when someone points out
a fundamental proposition which explains the fortuitous or secondary
matters to which they had been assigning primary importance.
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erative theme contained in the minimum thematic universe (the
generative themes in interaction) thus introduces or begins to
introduce men to a critical form of thinking about their world.
In the event, however, that men perceive reality as dense,
impenetrable, and enveloping, it is indispensable to proceed
with the investigation by means of abstraction. This method
does not involve reducing the concrete to the abstract (which
would negate its dialectical nature), but rather maintaining both
elements as opposites which interrelate dialectically in the act
of reflection. This dialectical movement of thought is exempli
fied perfectly in the analysis of a concrete, existential, ‘coded’
situation.18 Its ‘decoding’ requires moving from the abstract
to the concrete; this requires moving from the part to'IK&jffible
and then returning to the parts; this in turn requires that the
Subject recognize himself in the object (the coded concrete
existential situation) and recognize the object as a situation in
which he finds himself, together with other Subjects. If the de
coding is well done, this movement of flux and reflux from the
abstract to the concrete which occurs in the analysis of a coded
situation leads to the supersedence of the abstraction by the
critical perception of the concrete, which has already ceased to
be a dense, impenetrable reality.
When an individual is presented with a coded existential
situation (a sketch or a photograph which leads by abstraction
lo the concreteness of existential reality), his tendency is to
'split’ that coded situation. In the process of decoding, this
separation corresponds to the stage we call the ‘description of
the situation', and facilitates the discovery of the interaction
among the parts of the disjoined whole. This whole (the coded
sitTiation), which previously had been only diffusely appre
hended, begins to acquire meaning as thought flows back to it
from I he various dimensions. Since, however, the coding is the
representation of an existential situation, the decoder tends to
take the step from the representation to the very concrete situa
tion in which and with which he finds himself. It is thus possible
to explain conceptually why individuals begin to behave
18. The coding of an existential situation is the representation of that
situation, showing some of its constituent elements in interaction. De
coding is the critical analysis of the coded situation.
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differently in the face of objective reality, once that reality has
—ceased to-look like a blind alley- and has taken on its true
aspect: a challenge which men must meet.
In all the stages of decoding, men exteriorize their view of
the world. And in the way they think about and face the world
- fatalistically, dynamically, or staticajly - theic generative
themes may be founcL_A group which does not concretely
express a generative thematic - a fact which might appear to
imply the nonexistence of themes - is, on the contrary, suggest
ing a very dramatic theme: the theme of silence. The theme of
silence suggests a structure of muteness in the face of the over
whelming force of the limit-situations.
I must re-emphasize that the generative theme cannot be
found in men, divorced from reality; nor yet in reality, divorced
from men; much less in ‘no man’s land’. It can only be appre
hended in the mcn-world relationship. Tq^jnyestigate the
generative theme’is to investigate man’s thinking about reality
ahcTman’s action upon reality, which is his praxis..For precisely
\ this~reason, the methodology proposed requires the investi
gators and the people (who would normally be considered
objects of that investigation) to act as co-investigators. The more
active an attitude men take in regard to the exploration of their
thematics, the more they deepen their critical awareness of
reality, and in spelling out those thematics, take possession of
that reality.
Some may think it inadvisable to include the people as
investigators in the search for their own meaningful thematics:
that their intrusive influence (note, the ‘intrusion’ of those who
are most interested - or ought to be - in their own education)
will ‘adulterate’ the findings and thereby sacrifice the objectiv
ity of the investigation. This view mistakenly presupposes that
themes exist, in their original objective purity, outside men - as
if themes were things. Actually, themes exist in men in their
relations with the world, with reference, to concrete facts^Thc
same objective fact could evoke different complexes of generative
themes in different epochal sub-units. There is, therefore, a
relation between the given objective fact, the perception men
have of this fact, and the generative themes,
A meaningful thematics is naturally expressed by men, and a
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given moment of expression will differ from an earlier moment,
if men havej±anged their perception of the objective facts to
which the themes refer. From the investigator’s point of view,
the important thing is to detect the starting point at which men
visualize the ‘given’, then verify whether or not during the
process of investigation any transformation has occurred in
their way of perceiving reality. (Objective reality, of course,
remains unchanged. If the perception of that reality changes in
the course of the investigation, that fact does not impair the
validity of the investigation.)
We must realize that the aspirations, the motives, and the
objectives implicit in meaningful thematics are human aspira
tions, motives, and objectives. They do not exist ‘out there’
somewhere, as static entities: they are occurring. They are as
historical as men themselves; consequently, they cannot be
apprehended apart from men. To apprehend these themes and
to understand them is to understand both the men who embody
them and the reality to which they refer. But - precisely because
it is not possible to understand these themes apart from men it is necessary for the men concerned to understand them as well.
Thematic mvestigation thus becomes a common striving to
wards awareness of reality and self, thus making it a starting
poThTfor the educationalI pmcess or for cultural action of a
1 iberat ing character.
The real danger of the investigation is not that the supposed
objects of the investigation, discovering themselves to be co
investigators, might ‘adulterate’ the analytical results. On the
contrary, the danger lies in the risk of shifting the focus of the
investigation from the meaningful themes to the people them
selves, thereby treating the peopleas objects of the investigation.
Since this investigation is to serve as a basis for developing an
educational programme in which teacher-student andstudentstcachers combine their cognitions of the same object, the in
vestigation itself must likewise be based on reciprocity of
action.
C I
Thematic investigation, which occurs in the realm of the
human, cannot be reduced to a mechanical act. As a process of
search, of knowledge, and thus of creation, it requires the
investigators to discover the interpenetration of problems, in
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the linking of meaningful themes. The investigation will be
most educational when it is most critical, and most critical
when it avoids the narrow outlines of partial or ‘focalized’
views of reality, and sticks to thecomprehension of total reality.
Thus, the process of searching for the meaningful thematics
should include a concern for the links between themes, a con
cern to pose these themes as problems, and a concern for their
historical-cultural context.
Just as the educator may not elaborate a programme to
present to the people, neither may the investigator, starting
from points he has predetermined, elaborate ‘itineraries’ for
research into the thematic universe himself. Both education and
the investigation designed to support it must be ‘sympathetic’
activities, in the etymological sense of the word. That is, they
must consist of communication and of the common experience
of a reality perceived in the complexity of its constant
‘ becoming’.
The investigator who, in the name of scientific objectivity,
transforms the organic into something inorganic, what is
becoming into what is, life into death, is a man who fears
change. He does not see in change (not denying it, but not
desiring it either) a sign of life, but a sign of death and decay.
He wants to study change - but in order to stop it, not in order
to stimulate or deepen it. However, in seeing change as a sign
of death and in making people the passive objects of investiga
tion in order to arrive at rigid models, he betrays his own
character as a destroyer of life.
I repeat: the investigation of thematics_involves the investi
gation of the the people’s thinking - thinking which.occurs only
in and among men seeking out reality together. I cannot tlfink
for others or without others, nor can others think for me. Even if
the people’s thinking is superstitious or naive, it is only as they
rethink their assumptions in action that_ th^y.. can change..
Producing and acting upon their own ideas - not absorbing
those of others - must constitute that processt._
Men, as beings ‘in a situation’, find themselves rooted in
temporal-spatial conditions which mark them and which they
also mark. They will tend to reflect on their own ‘situationality ’
to the extent that it challenges them to act upon it. Men are
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because they_arci»_a_sitliation. And they wy// be more the more
they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically
act upon it.___
Reflection upon situationality is reflection about the very
condition of existence: critical thinking through which men
discover each other to be ‘ in a situation Only as this situation
ceases to present itself as a dense, enveloping reality or a tor
menting blind alley, and men can come to perceive it as an
objective-problematic situation - only then can commitment
exist. Men emerge from their submersion and acquire the ability
to intervene in reality as it is unveiled. Intervention in reality historical awareness itself - thus represents a step forward from
emergence, and results from the conscicntization of the situa
tion. Conscientization is the deepening of the attitude of
awareness characteristic of all emergence.
Every thematic investigation which deepens historical aware
ness is thus really educational, while all authentic education
investigates thinking. The more educators and the people
investigate the people’s thinking, and are thus jointly educated,
the more they continue to investigate. Education and thematic
investigation, in the problem-posing concept of education, are
simply different moments of the same process.
In contrast with the antidialogical and non-communicative
‘deposits’ of the banking method of education, the programme
content of the problem-posing method - dialogical par excel
lence - is constituted and organized by the students’ view of the
woild, where their own generative themes are found. The
content thus constantly expands and renews itself. The task
of the dialogical teacher in an interdisciplinary team working on
the thematic universe revealed by their investigation is to ‘re
present ’ that universe to the people from whom he first received
it - and ‘re-present’ it not as a lecture, but as^aq^roblem.
Let us say, for example, that a group has the responsibility of
coordinating a plan for adult education in a peasant area with
a high percentage of illiteracy. The plan includes a literacy
campaign and a post-literacy phase. During the former stage,
problem-posing education seeks out and investigates the
‘generative worcLL; in the post-literacy stage, it seeks out and
investigates the ‘generative theme’.
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Let us here, however, consider only the investigation of the
generative themes or the meaningful thematics.19 Once the
investigators have determined tire area in whiclr they will work—
and have acquired a preliminary acquaintance with it through
secondary sources, they initiate the first stage of the investigation. This beginning (like any beginning in any human activity)
involves difficulties and risks which are to a certain point nor
mal, although they are not always evident in the first contact
with the individuals of the area. In this first contact, the in
vestigators need to get a significant number of people to agree
to an informal meeting during v/hich they can talk about their
objectives in being in the area. In this meeting they explain the
reason for the investigation, how it is to be carried out, and
what use will be made of it; they further explain that the
investigation will be impossible without a relation of mutual
understanding and trust. If the participants agree both to the
investigation and to the subsequent process,20 the investigators
should call for volunteers among the participants to serve as
assistants. These volunteers will gather a series of necessary
data about the life of the area. Of even greater importance,
however, is the active presence of these volunteers in the in
vestigation.
Meanwhile, the investigators begin their own visits to the
area, never forcing themselves, but acting as sympathetic ob
servers with an attitude of understanding towards what they see.
While it is normal forjnvcstigators to come to the_arca_with
values wluch influence their perceptions, this does no: mean that
they may transform the thematic investigation into a means of
imposing these values. The only dimension of these values
which it is hoped the men whose thematics are being invesfigated will come to share (it is presumed that th?7hvcsTigators
possess this quality) is a critical perception of the world, which
implies a correct method of approaching reality in order to
19. Regarding the investigation and use of‘generative words’, see my
Educacdo coma Prdtica du Liberdatle.
20. According to the Brazilian sociologist Maria Edy Ferreira (in an
unpublished work), thematic investigation is only justified to the extent
that it returns to the people what truly belongs to them; to the extent
that it represents, not an attempt to learn about the people, but to come
to know with them the reality which challenges them.
83
unveil it. And critical perception cannot be imposed. Thus,
from the very beginning, thematic investigation is expressed as
—an educational pursuit, as cultural action.--------------During their visits, the investigators set their critical ‘aim’
on the area under study, as if it were for them an enormous,
unique, living ‘code’ to be deciphered. They regard the area as
a totality, and in visit upon visit attempt to ‘split ’ it by analysing
the partial dimensions which impress them. Through this pro
a
cess they expand their understanding of how the various parts
interact, which will later help them penetrate the totality
itself.
decoding stage, the investigators observe certain
rnoments of thejife of the area — sometimes directly, sometimes
by means of informal conversations with the inhabitants. They
register everything in their notebooks, including apparently
unimportant items: the way the people talk, their style of life,
their behaviour at church and at work. They record the idiom
of the people: their expressions, their vocabulary, and their
syntax (not their incorrect pronunciation, but rather the way
they construct their thought).*1
It is essential for the investigators to observe the area under
varying circumstances: labour in the fields, meetings of a local
association (noting the behaviour of the participants, the langu
age used, and the relations between the officers and the mem
bers), the role played by women and young people, leisure
hours, games and sports, conversations with people in their
homes (noting examples of husband-wife and parent-child
relationships). No activity must escape the attention of the
investigators during the initial survey of the area.
After each observation visit, the investigator should draw up
a brief report to be discussed by the entire team, in order to
r
21. The Brazilian novelist Guimaraes Rosa is a brilliant example of
how a writer can capture authentically, not the pronunciation or the
grammatical corruptions of the people,but their syntax: the very structure
of their thought. Indeed (and this is not to disparage his exceptional value
as a writer), Guimaraes Rosa was the investigator par excellence of the
•meaningful thematics’ of the inhabitants of the Brazilian hinterland.
Professor Paulo de Tarso is currently preparing an essay which analyses
this little-considered aspect of the work of the author of Grande Sertdo Vcredos [in English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands].
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evaluate the preliminary findings of both the professional in
vestigators and the local assistants. To facilitate the participa
tion of the assistants, the evaluation meetings should be held
in the area itself.
The evaluation meetings represent a second stage in the
decoding of the unique living code. As each person, in his
decoding essay, relates how he perceived or felt a certain event
or situation, his exposition challenges all the other decoders by
re-presenting to them the same reality upon which they have
themselves been intent. At this moment they ‘re-consider’,
through the ‘considerations’ of others, their own previous ‘con
sideration’. Thus the analysis of reality made by each individual
decoder sends Them all back, dialogically, to the disjoined
whole which once more becomes a totality evoking a new
analysis by the investigators, following which a new evaluative
and critical meeting will be held. Representatives of the in
habitants participate in all activities as members of the investi
gating team.
The more the group divide and reintegrate the whole, the
more closely they approach the nuclei of the principal and
secondary contradictions which involve the inhabitants of the
area. By locating these nuclei of contradictions, the investigators
might even at this stage be able to organize the programme content'of their educational action. Indeed, if the content reflected
these contradictions, it would undoubtedly contain the nieaningful thematics of the area. And one can safely affirm that
action based on these observations would be much more likely
to succeed than that based on ‘decisions from the top’. The
investigators should not, however, be tempted by this possi
bility. The basic thing, starting from the initial perception of
these nuclei of contradictions (which include the principal con
tradiction of society as a larger epochal unit) is to study the
inhabitants’ level of awareness of these contradictions.
Intrinsically, these contradictions constitute limit-situations,
involvejhemes, and indicate tasks. If individuals arc caught up
in and are unable to separate themselves from these limit
situations, their theme in reference to these situations is fatalism,
and the task implied by the theme is the lack of a task. Thus,
although the limit-situations are objective realities which call
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forth needs in individuals, one must investigate with these indi
viduals their level of awareness of these situations.
A limit-situation as a concrete reality can call forth from
people in different areas (and even in sub-areas of the same area)
quite opposite themes and tasks. Thus, the basic concern of the
investigators should be to concentrate on the knowledge of what
Goldmann calls ‘real consciousness’ and the ‘potential con
sciousness’. ‘Real consciousness [is] the result of the multiple
obstacles and deviations that the different factors of empirical
reality put into opposition and submit for realization by [the]
potential consciousness.’
Real consciousness implies the impossibility of perceiving
the ‘untested feasibility’ which lies beyond the limit-situations.
But whereas the untested feasibility cannot be achieved at the
level of ‘real [or present] consciousness’, it can be realized
through ‘testing action’ which reveals its hitherto unperceived
viability. The untested feasibility and real consciousness are
related, as are testing action and potential consciousness. Goldrnann's concept of‘potential consciousness’ is similar to what
Nicolai terms ‘unperceived practicable solutions’ (our ‘un
tested feasibility’), in contrast to ‘perceived practicable solu
tions’ and ‘presently practised solutions’, which correspond to .
Goldmann’s ‘real consciousness’. Accordingly, the fact that the
investigators may in the first stage of the investigation approxi
mately apprehend the complex of contradictions does not
authorize them to begin to structure the programme content of
educational action. This perception of reality is still their own,
not that of the people.
HJs_wi_th the apprehension of the complex of contradictions
that the second stage of the investigation begins.’ Always acting
asjHeam, the investigators will select some of these contradic
tions to develop the codifications to be used in the thematic inyestiglitjon. Since the codifications (sketches or photographs^
are the objects which mediate the decoders in their critical
22. The codifications may also be oral. In this case they consist of a
few words presenting an existential problem, followed by decoding. The
team of the Inslituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario (Institute for Agrarian
Development) in Chile has used this method successfully in thematic
Investigations.
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analysis, the preparation of these codifications must be guided
by certain principles other than the usual ones for making visual
-aids,_________________ ______________________________________
The first requirement is th<it_thcsc codifications must neces
sarily represent situations familiar to the_individuals whose
thematics are being examjlicd^so that they can easily recognize
the situations (and thus their own relation to them). It is in
admissible (whether during the process of investigation or in the
following stage, when the meaningful thematics are presented
as programme content) to present pictures of reality unfamiliar
to the participants. The latter procedure (although dialectical,
because individuals analysing an unfamiliar reality could com
pare it with their own and discover the limitations of each)
cannot come before the more basic one dictated by the partici
pants’ state of submersion, that is, the process in which indi
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viduals analysing their own reality become aware of their earlier,
distorted perceptions and thereby arrive at a new perception of
that reality.
An equally fundamental requirement for the preparation of
codifications is that their thematic nucleus be neither too explicit
nor too enigmatic. The former may degenerate into mere prop
3
aganda, with no real decoding to be done beyond stating the
obviously predetermined content. The latter runs the risk of
appearing to be a puzzle or a guessing game. Since they rep
resent existential situations, the codifications should be simple
in their complexity and offer various decoding possibilities in
order to avoid the brain-washing tendencies of propaganda.
i
Codifications are not slogans; they arc cognizable objects, challenges towards which the critical reflection of the decoders
should be dircctcci.
5
In order to offer various possibilities of analysis in the de
coding process, the codifications should be organized as a
‘thematic fan*. As the decoders reflect on them, the codifica
tions should open up in the direction of other themes. I his
* opening up (which does not occur if the thematic content is
cither too explicit or too enigmatic) is indispensable to the
perception of the dialectical relations which exist between the
themes and their opposites. Accordingly, the codifications
1
reflecting an existential situation must objectively constitute a
totality. Its elements must interact in the makeup of the whole.
In the process of decoding, the participants externalize their
Thernatics andtfiereby rti^ke explicit Uie»r ‘real consgjgusgess ’
of the~worid. As they do this, they begin to see how they them
selves acted while actually experiencing the situation they are
now"analysing, ^d thus reach a ‘perception of their previous
perception’. By achieving this awareness, they come to perceive
reality differently; by broadening the horizon of their percep
tion, they discover more easily in their ‘background awareness’
the dialectical relations between these two dimensions of reality.
By stimulating ‘perception of the previous perception’ and
‘knowledge of the previous knowledge’, decoding stimulates
the appearance of a new perception and the development of new
knowledge. The new perception and knowledge are systemati
cally continued with the inauguration of the educational plan,
which transforms the untested feasibility into testing action,
as potential consciousness supersedes real consciousness.
Preparing the codifications further requires that as far as
possible they should represent contradictions ‘inclusive of
others which constitute the system of contradictions of the area
under study.23 As each of these ‘inclusive’ codifications is
prepared, the other contradictions ‘contained’ therein should
also be codified. The decoding of the former will be dialectically
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clarified by the decoding of the latter.
In this connection, a very valuable contribution to our
method has been made by Gabriel Bode, a young Chilean
civil servant in one of the most significant Chilean govern
mental institutions: the Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuano
(I NBA P).24 In the course of using this method in the post
literacy stage. Bode observed that the peasants became inter
ested in the discussion only when the codification related directly
to their felt needs. Any deviation in the codification, as well as
any attempt by the educator to guide the decoding discussion
23. This recommendation is made by Josd Luis Fiori, in an unpublished
1,1 24° Un(PU recently, INDAP was directed by the economist and authen
tic humanist Jacques Chonchol.
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into other areas, produced silence and indifference. On the other
hand, he observed that even when the codification25 centred on
their felt needs the peasants could not manage to concentrate
systematically on the discussion, which often digressed to the
point of never reaching a synthesis. Also, they almost never
perceived the relationship of their felt needs to the direct and
indirect causes of these needs. One might say that they failed
to perceive the untested feasibility lying beyond the limit
situations which engendered their needs.
Bode then decided to experiment with the simultaneous pro
jection of different situations; in this technique lies the value ol
his contribution. Initially, he projects a very simple codification
of an existential situation. He terms his first codification ‘es
sential’; it represents the basic nucleus and opens up into a
thematic fan extending to ‘auxiliary’ codifications. After the
essential codification is decoded, the educator maintains its pro
jected image as a reference for the participants and successively
projects-alongside it the auxiliary codifications. By means oi the
latter, which are directly related to the essential codification, he
sustains the vivid interest of the participants, who are thereby
enabled to reach a synthesis.
The great achievement of Gabriel Bode is that, by means of
the dialectics between the essential and the auxiliary codifica
tions, he has managed to communicate to the participants a
sense of totality. Individuals who were submerged in reality,
merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the
causes of their needs. In this way, they can go beyond the level .
of real consciousness to that of potential consciousness much
more rapidly.
Once the codifications have been prepared and all their poss
ible thematic facets have been studied by the interdisciplinary
team, the investigators begin the third stage oi the investigation
by returning to the area to initiate decoding dialogues in the
‘ t hematic invest iga t ion circles ’.2<>These discussions, which decode
25. These codifications were not ‘inclusivein Fiori’s definition.
36. Each ‘investigation circle’ should have a maximum of twenty
persons. There should be as many circles aS necessary to involve, as
participants, ten per cent of the population of the area or sub-area being
studied.
89
the material prepared in the preceding stage, are taped for sub
sequent analysis by the interdisciplinary team.27 In addition to
the investigator acting as decoding co-ordinator, two other
specialists - a psychologist and a sociologist - attend the meet
ings. Their task is to note and record the significant (and
apparently insignificant) reactions of the decoders.
During the decoding process, the co-ordinator must not only
listen to the individuals but must challenge them, posing as
problems both the codified existential situation and their own
answers. Due to the cathartic force of the methodology, the
participants of the thematic investigation circles externalize a
series of sentiments and opinions about themselves, the world,
and others, that perhaps they would not express under different
circumstances.
In one of the thematic investigations carried out in Santiago,
a group of tenement residents discussed a scene showing a
drunken man walking on the street and three young men con
versing on the corner. The group participants commented that
‘the only one there who is productive and useful to his country
is the souse who is returning home after working all day for
low wages and who is worried about his family because he
can’t take care of their needs. He is the only worker. He is a
decent worker and a souse like us.’
The investigator2® had intended to study aspects of alcohol
ism. He probably would not have elicited the above responses
if he had presented the participants with a questionnaire he had
elaborated himself. If asked directly, they might even have
27. These subsequent meetings of analysis should include the volun
teers from the area who assisted in the investigation, and some participants
of the Thematic investigation circles’. Their contribution is both a right
to which they are entitled and an indispensable aid to the analysis of the
specialists. As co-investigalors of the specialists, they will rectify and/or
ratify the interpretations the latter make of the findings. From the metho
dological point of view, their participation gives the investigation (which
from the beginning is based on a ‘sympathetic’ relationshipjWn additional
safeguard: the critical presence of representatives of the people from the
beginning until the final phase, that of thematic analysis, ccShtinucd in the
organization of the programme content of educational action as liberating
cultural action.
28. The psychiatrist Patricio Lopes, whose work is described in Educarfo
coma Prdtica da Libcrdade.
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denied ever taking a drink themselves. But in their comments on
the codification of an existential situation they could recognize,
snd in which they could recognize themselves, they ^aid what__
they really felt.
There are two important aspects to these declarations. On
the one hand, they verbalize the connection between earning
low wages, feeling exploited, and getting drunk - getting drunk
as a flight from reality, as an attempt to overcome the frustra
tion of inaction, as an ultimately self-destructive solution. On
the other hand, they manifest the need to rate the drunkard
highly. He is the only one useful to his country, because he
works, while the others only gab’. After praising the drunkard,
the participants then identify themselves with him, as workers
who also drink - ‘decent workers’.
In contrast, imagine the failure of a moralistic educator,29
sermonizing against alcoholism and presenting as an example
of virtue something which for these men is not a manifestation
of virtue. In this and in other cases, the only sound procedure
is the conscicntization of the situation, which should be at
tempted from the start of the thematic investigation. (Obviously,
conscicntization does not stop at the level of mere subjective
perception of a situation, but through action prepares men for
the struggle against the obstacles to their humanization.)
In another experience, this time with peasants, I observed
that the unchanging motif during an entire discussion of a situa
tion depicting work in the fields was the demand for an increase
in wages and the necessity of joining together to create a union
to obtain this particular demand. Three situations were dis
cussed during the session, and the motif was always the same.
Now imagine an educator who has organized his educational
!U/ lIlcsc. Jncll« consist ing^ of reading ‘wholesome’
tex^^i which one learns that ‘the water is in the well’. But
precisely this type of thing happens all the time in both educa
tion and politics, because it is not realized that the dialogical
nature of education begins with thematic investigation.
Once the decoding in the circles has been completed, the
last stage of the investigation begins, as the investigators under
take a systematic interdisciplinary study of their findings.
29. Sec Niebuhr’s book.
Listening to the tapes recorded during the decoding sessions
and studying the notes taken by the psychologist and the socio
logist, the investigators begin to list the themes expticir^or
implicit in the affirmations made during the sessions. These
themes should be classified according to the various social
sciences. Classification does not mean that when the programme
is elaborated the themes will be seen as belonging to isolated
categories, but only that a theme is viewed in a specific manner
by each of the social sciences to which it is related. The theme
of development, for example, is especially appropriate to the
field of economics, but not exclusively so. This theme would also
be focalized by sociology, anthropology, and social psychology
(fields concerned with cultural change and with the modification
of attitudes and values - questions which are equally relevant
to a philosophy of development). It would be focalized by
political science (a field concerned with the decisions which
involve development), by education, and so forth. In this way,
the themes which characterize a totality will never be approach
ed rigidly. It w’ould indeed be a pity if the themes, after being
investigated in the richness of their interpenetration with other
aspects of reality, were subsequently to be handled in such a
way as to sacrifice their richness (and hence their force) to the
strictures of specialties.
Once the thematic demarcation is completed, each specialist
presents to the interdisciplinary team a project for the ‘break
down’ of his theme. In breaking down the theme, the specialist
looks for the fundamental nuclei which, comprising learning
units and establishing a sequence, give a general view of the
theme. As each specific project is discussed, the other specialists
make suggestions. These may be incorporated into the project
and/or may be included in the brief essays to be written on the
theme. These essays, to which bibliographic suggestions are an
nexed, are valuable aids in training the teacher-students who
will work in the ‘culture circles’.
During this effort to break down the meaningful thematics,
the team will recognize the need to include some fundamental
themes which were not directly suggested by the people during
the preceding investigation.The introduction of these themes has
proved to be necessary, and also corresponds to the dialogical
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character of education. If educational programming is dia
logical, the teacher-students also have the right to participate
by including themes not previously suggested. I call the latter
type of theme ‘hinged themes’, owing to their function. They
rf!ay either facilitate the connection between two themes in the
Programme unit, filling a possible gap between the two; or they
may illustrate the relations between the general*programme
content and the view of the world held by the people. Hence,
one of these themes may be located at the beginning of thematic
units.
The anthropological concept of culture is one of these hinged
themes. It clarifies the role of men in the world and with the
world as transforming rather than adaptive beings?0
Once the breakdown of the thematics is completed,31 there
follows the stage of its ‘codification’: choosing the best channel
ot communication for each theme and its representation. A
codification may be simple or compound. The former utilizes
either the visual (pictorial or graphic), the tactile, or the audit!ve channel; the latter utilizes various channels.33 The selection
oi the pictorial or graphic channel depends not only on the
30. With regard to the importance of the anthropological analysis of
culture, see Educa^ao como Prdtica da Liberdade.
31. Note that the entire programme is a totality made up of interrelated
units which in themselves arc also totalities.
The themes are totalities in themselves but arc also elements which in
interaction constitute the thematic units of the entire programme.
The thematic breakdown splits the total themes in search of their
undamental nuclei, which are the partial elements.
The codification process attempts to re-totalizc the disjointed theme in
the representation of existential situations.
In decoding, individuals split the codification to apprehend its implicit
t icme or themes. The dialectical decoding process docs not end there, but
is completed in the re-totalization of the disjointed whole which is thus
, n* -c clear;;, understood (as arc also its relations to other codified situa. t'ons, all of which represent existential situations).
32. CODIFICATION
(a) Simple:
visual channel
pictorial
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graphic
tactile channel
auditive channel
(b) Compound: simultaneity of channels.
material to be codified, but also on whether or not the.indiv
iduals with whom one wishes to communicate are literate, t
After the thematics has been codified, the didactic material
(photographs, slides, film strips, posters, reading texts, and so
I or th) is prepared. The team may propose some themes or
aspects of some themes to outside specialists as topics for
recorded interviews.
Let us take the theme of development as an example. The
team approaches two or more economists of varying schools of
thought, tells them about the programme, and invites them to
contribute an interview on the subject in language comprehensible to the audience. If the specialists accept, an interview
oi hfteen to twenty minutes is taped. A photograph may be
taken oi each specialist while he is speaking.
When the taped interview is presented to the culture circle
an introductory statement indicates who each speaker is what
he has written, what he has done, and what he is doing now;
meanwhile, his photograph is projected on a screen. If, for
instance, the speaker is a university professor, the introduction
could include a discussion regarding what the participants think
of universities and what they expect of them. The group has
already been told that the recorded interview will be followed
by a discussion of its contents (which function as an auditive'
codification). The team subsequently reports to the specialist
tne reaction of the participants during the discussion. This tech
nique links intellectuals, often well-intentioned, but not in
frequently alienated from the reality of the people, to that reality.
It also gives the people an opportunity to hear and criticize the
thought of intellectuals.
■Some themes or nuclei may be p.r^septed by means of brief
dramatizations, containing the the.^^y _ no ‘solutions’! The '
dramatization acts as a codification^ a problem-posing situalion to be discussed.
Anol her didactic resource - as long as it is carried out within a
problem-posing rather than a banking approach to education is the reading and discussion of magazine articles, newspapers,
and book chapters (beginning with passages). As in the case of
the recorded interviews, the author is introduced before the
group begins, and the contents are discussed afterwards.
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Along the same lines, it is indispensable to analyse the con
tents of newspaper editorials following any given event: ‘Why
do difTcrent newspapers have such different interpretations of
the same fact?’ This practice helps develop a sense of criticism,
so that people will react to newspapers or news broadcasts not
as passive objects of the ‘communiques’ directed at them, but
rather as consciousnesses seeking to be free.
With all the didactic material prepared, to which should be
added small introductory manuals, the team of educators is
ready to re-present to the people their own thematics, in sys
tematized and amplified form. The thematics which have come
from the people return to them - not as contents to be deposited,
but as problems to be solved.
The first task of the basic-education teachers is to present the
general programme of the educational campaign. The people
will find themselves in this programme; it will not seem strange
to them, since it originated with them. The educators will also
explain (based on the dialogical character of education) the
presence in the programme of the hinged themes, and their
significance.
If the educators lack sufficient funds to carry out the pre
liminary thematic investigation as described above, they can—
with a minimum knowledge of the situation - select some basic
themes to serve as ‘codifications to be investigated’. Accord
ingly, they can begin with introductory themes and simultan
eously initiate further thematic investigation.
One of these basic themes (and one which I consider central
and indispensable) is the anthropological concept of culture.
Whether men arc peasants or urban workers, learning to read
or enrolled in a post-literacy programme, the starling point of
their search to know more (in the instij^^laj meaning of me
-term) is the debate of the concept. As l^^oiscuss the world of
culture, they express their level of awareness of reality, in which
various themes arc implicit. Their discussion touches upon
other aspects of reality, which comes to be perceived in an
increasingly critical manner. These aspects in turn involve many
other themes.
With the experience now behind me, I can affirm that the
concept of culture, discussed imaginatively in all or most of its
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dimensions, can provide various aspects of an educational
programme. In addition, after several days of dialogue with the
culture circle participants,^he“educamrsn^irrask the partiCFpants directly: ‘What other themes or subjects could we discuss
besides these?’ As each person replies, the answer is noted
down and is immediately proposed to the group as a problem.
One of the group members may say, for example: ‘I’d like to
talk about nationalism.’ ‘Very well,’ says the educator, noting
down the suggestion, and adds: ‘What does nationalism mean?
Why is a discussion about nationalism of any interest to us?’
My experience shows that when a suggestion is posed as a
problem to the group, new themes appear. If, in an area where
(for example) thirty culture circles meet on the same night, all
the ‘co-ordinators’ (educators) proceed in this fashion, the
central team will have a rich variety of thematic material for
study.
The important thing, from the point of view of libertarian
education, is for men to come to feel like masters of their
thinking by discussing the thinking and views of the world
explicitly or implicitly manifest in their own suggestions and
those of their comrades. Because this view of education starts
with the conviction that it cannot present its own programme
but must search for this programme dialogically with the
people, it serves to introduce the pedagogy of the oppressed, in
the development of which the oppressed must participate.
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Chapter 4
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This chapter, which analyses the theories of cultural action that
develop from antidialogical and dialogical matrices, will make
frequent reference to points presented in the previous chapters,
either to expand these points or to clarify new affirmations.
I shall start by reaffirming that men, as beings of the praxis,
differ from animals, which are beings of pure activity. Animals
do not consider the world; they are immersed in it. In contrast,
men emerge from the world, objectifyjt^and in so_dp.mg can
understand and transform it with their labour.
■^CnTrnals?which do'"hbt'labdur, live in a setting which they
cannot transcend. Hence/each animal species lives in the con
text appropriate to it, and these contexts, while open to men,
cannot communicate among themselves.
But men’s activity consists of action and reflection: it is
praxis; it is transformation of the world. And as praxis, it
requires theory to illuminate it. Men’s activity is theory and
practice; it is reflection and action. It cannot, as I stressed in
chapter 2, be reduced to either verbalism or activism.
Lenin’s famous statement: ‘Without a revolutionary theory
there can be no revolutionary movement’ (see Henry M. Christ
ian edition) means that a revolution is achieved with neither
verbalism nor activism, but rather with praxis, that is, with
reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed.
The revolutionary effort to transform these structures radically
■ cannot designate its leaders as its thinkers and the oppressed as
mere doers.
If true commitment to the people, involving the transformation of thejeajjty by which they are oppressed, requires a
theory of transforming action, this theory cannot fail to assign
to the people a fundamental role in the transformation process^
The leaders cannot treat the oppressed as mere activists to be .
denied"thei 6^rtumty_pf reflection and..aJh^^moiely_ihe
illusion of acting, whereas in fact they would continue to be
m ani pu lated and in this case by the presumed foes ofmanip\datiorL_
The leaders do bear the responsibility for co-ordination - and,
at times, direction - but leaders who deny praxis to the op
pressed thereby invalidate their own praxis. By imposing their
word on others, they falsify that word and establish a contra
diction between their methods and their objectives. If they are
truly committed to liberation, their action and reflection can
not proceed without the action and reflection of others.
Revolutionary praxis must stand opposed to the praxis of the
dominant elites, for they are by nature antithetical. Revolution
ary praxis cannot tolerate an absurd dichotomy in which the
praxis of the people is merely that of following the leaders’
decisions - a dichotomy reflecting the prescriptive methods of
the dominant elites. Revolutionary praxis is a unity, and the
leaders cannot treat the oppressed as their possession.
Manipulation, sloganizing, ‘depositing’, regimentation, and
prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis,
precisely because they are components of the praxis of domina
tion. In order to dominate, the dominator has no choice but to
deny true praxis to the people, deny them the right to say their
own word and think their own thoughts. He cannot act dialogically; for him to do so would mean either that he had relin
quished his power to dominate and joined the cause of the
oppressed, or that he had lost that power through miscalculation.
Conversely, revolutionary leaders who do not act dialogically
in their relations with the people either have retained character
istics of the dominator and are not truly revolutionary; or they
are totally misguided in their conception of their role, and prisoners of their own sectarianism - are equally non-revolutionary. They niay even reach power. But the validity of any
revolution resulting from antidialogical action is thoroughly
doubtful.
It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the
revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of
their role as Subjects of the transformation. If they are drawn
into the process as ambiguous beings, partly themselves and
partly the oppressors housed within them - and if they come
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to power still embodying that ambiguity imposed on them by
the situation of oppression - it is my contention that they will
merely imagine they have reached power.’ Their existential
duality may even facilitate the rise of a sectarian climate leading
to the installation of bureaucracies which undermine the revolu
tion. If the oppressed do not become aware of this ambiguity
during the course of the revolutionary process, they may
participate in that process with a spirit more revanchist than
revolutionary.2 They may aspire to revolution as a means of
domination, rather than as a road to liberation.
If revolutionary leaders who incarnate a genuine humanism
have difficulties, the difficulties and problems will be far greater
for a group of leaders who try (even with the best of intentions)
to carry out the revolution for the people. To attempt this is
equivalent to carrying out a revolution without the people,
because the people are drawn into the process by the same meth
ods and procedures used to oppress them.
Dialogue with the people is radically necessary to every
authentic revolution. This is what makes it a revolution, as
distinguished from a military coup. One does not expect dia
logue from a coup - only deceit (in order to achieve Tegitimacy’) or force (in order to repress). Sooner or later, a true
revolution must initiate a courageous dialogue with the people.
Its very legitimacy lies in that dialogue.3 It cannot fear the
people, their expression, their effective participation in power.
It must be accountable to them, must speak frankly to them of
1. This danger further requires the revolutionary leaders to resist imitat
ing the procedures of the oppressors, who ‘enter’ the oppressed and arc
‘housed’ by the latter. The revolutionaries, in their praxis with the op
pressed, cannot try to ‘reside’ in the latter. On the contrary, when they
try (with the oppressed) to ‘throw out’ the oppressors, they do this in
order to live »e/7// the oppressed - not to live within rhciri.
2. Although the oppressed, who have always been subject to a regime
of exploitation, may understandably impart a revanchist dimension to the
revolutionary struggle, the revolution must not exhaust its forces in this
dimension.
3. ‘While we might obtain some benefit from doubt,’ said bidcl Castro
to the Cuban people as he confirmed the death of Guevara, *liex, fear
of the truth, complicity with false illusions, and complicity with lies
have never been weapons of the revolution.’ Quoted in Granmui, 17
October, 1967. Emphasis added.
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its achievements, its mistakes, its miscalculations, and its dif
ficulties.
The earlreraralogue begins, the more truly revolutionary will
the movement be. This dialogue which is radically necessary to
revolution corresponds to another radical need: that of men as
beings who cannot be truly human apart from communication,
for they are essentially communicative creatures. To impede
communication is to reduce men to the status of ‘ things ’ - and
that is a job for oppressors, not for revolutionaries.
Let me emphasize that my defence of the praxis implies no
dichotomy by which this praxis could be divided into a prior
stage of reflection and a subsequent stage of action. Action and
reflection occur simultaneously. A critical analysis of reality
may, however, reveal that a particular form of action is im
possible or inappropriate at the present time. Those who
through reflection perceive the unfeasibility or inappropriate
ness of one or another form of action (which should accordingly
be postponed or substituted) cannot thereby be accused of in
action. Critical reflection is also action.
I previously stated that in education the attempt of the
teacher-student to understand a cognizable object is not ex
hausted in that object, because his act extends to other studentsteachers in such a way that the cognizable object mediates their
capacity for understanding. The same is true of revolutionary
action. That is, the oppressed and the leaders are equally the
Subjects of revolutionary action, and reality serves as the med
ium for the transforming action of both groups. In this theory
of action one cannot speak of an actor, nor simply of actors,
but rather of actors in intercommunication.
1 his affirmation might appear to imply division, dichotomy,
rupture of the revolutionary forces; in fact, it signifies exactly
the opposite:-their communion; Apart from th’is communion,
we do see dichotomy: leaders on one side and people on the
other, in a replica of the relations of oppression. Denial of
communion in the revolutionary process, avoidance of dialogue
with the people under the pretext of organizing them, of
strengthening revolutionary power, or of ensuring a united
front, is really a fear of freedom. It is fear of or lack of faith in
the people. But if the people cannot be trusted, there is no
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reason for liberation; in this case the revolution is not even
carried out for the people, but 1 by' t..e people for the leaders: a
complete self-negation.
The revolution is made neither by the leaders for the people,
nor by the people for the leaders, but by both acting together
in unshakeable solidarity. This solidarity is born only when the
leaders witness to it by their humble, loving, and courageous
encounter with the people. Not all men have sufficient courage
for this encounter - but when men avoid encounter they become
inflexible and treat others as mere objects; instead of nurturing
life they kill life; instead of searching for life, they flee from it.
And these are oppressor characteristics.
Some may think that to affirm dialogue - the encounter of
men in the world to transform the world - is naively and sub
jectively idealistic.4 There is nothing, however, more real or
concrete than men in the world and with the world, than men
with other men - and some men against others,-as oppressing
and oppressed classes.
Authentic revolution attempts to transform the reality which
begets this dehumanizing state of affairs. Those whose interests
are served by that reality cannot carry out this transformation,
it must be achieved by the tyrannized, with their leaders. This
truth, however, must become radically consequential, that is,
the leaders must incarnate it, through communion with the
people. In this communion both groups grow together, and the
leaders, instead of being simply self-appointed, are installed or
authenticated in their praxis with the praxis of the people.
Many persons, bound to a mechanistic view of reality, do not
perceive that the concrete situation of men conditions their
consciousness of the world, and that in turn this consciousness
conditions their attitudes and their ways of dealing with r.cality.
They think that reality can be transformed mechanistically, 5
4. Once more, lei me repeat that this dialogical encounter cannot lake
place between antagonists.
5. Goldmann writes: ‘The epochsduring which the dominant classes are
stable, epochs in which the workers’ movement must defend itself against a
powerful adversary which is occasionally threatening and is in every case
solidly seated in power, produces naturally a socialist literature which em
phasizes the •‘material” element of reality, the obstacles to be overcome,
and the scant efficacy of human awareness and action. ’
without posing men’s false consciousness of reality as a problem
or, through revolutionary action, developing a consciousness
which is less and less false. There is no historical reality which
is not human. There is no history without men, and no history
for men; there is only history of men, made by men and (as
Marx pointed out) in turn making them. It is when the majori
ties are denied their right to participate in history as Subjects
that they become dominated and alienated. Thus, to supersede
their condition as objects by the status of Subjects - the ob
jective of any true revolution - requires the people to act, as
well as reflect, upon the reality to be transformed.
It would indeed be idealistic to affirm that, by merely re
flecting on oppressive reality and discovering their status as
objects, men have thereby already become Subjects. But while
this perception in and of itself does not mean that men have
become Subjects, it does mean, as one of my co-investigators6
affirmed, that they are ‘Subjects in expectancy' - an expectancy
which leads them to seek to solidify their new status.
On the other hand, it would be a false premise to believe that
activism (which is not true action) is the road to revolution.
Men will be truly critical if they live the plenitude of the praxis,
that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which
increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to
move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level,
one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality. If
revolutionary leaders deny this right to the people, they impair
their own capacity to think - or at least to think correctly.
Revolutionary leaders cannot think without the people, or for
the people, but only with the people. ■
The dominant elites, on the other hand, can - and do - think
without the people - although they do not permit themselves
the luxury of failing to think a/xwMhc people in order to know
them better and thus dominate them more efficiently. Conse
quently, any apparent dialogue or communication between the
elites and the masses is really the depositing of‘communiques’,
whose contents arc intended to exercise a domesticating
influence.
6. Fernando Garcia, a Honduran, in a course for Latin Americans in
Santiago in 1967.
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Why do the dominant elites not become debilitated when
they do not think with the people? Because the latter constitute
their antithesis, their very reason for existence. If the elites
were to think with the people, the contradiction would be
superseded and they could no longer dominate. From the point
of view of the dominators in any epoch, correct thinking pre
supposes the non-thinking of the people. Niebuhr writes:
A Mr Giddy, later President of the Royal Society raised objections
which could be matched in every country: ‘However specious in
theory the project imight be of giving education to the labouring
classes of the poor, it would be prejudicial to their morals and happi
ness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life instead of making
them good servants,in agriculture and other laborious employments;
instead of teaching them subordination it would render them fractious
and refractory as was evident in the manufacturing countries; it
would enable them to rea<l seditious pamphlets, vicious books and
publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to
their superiors and in a few years the legislature would find it neces
sary to direct the strong arm of power against them.'
What Mr Giddy really wanted (and what the elites of today
want, although they do not denounce popular education so
cynically and openly) was for the people not to think. Since the
Mr Giddys of all epochs, as an oppressor class, cannot think
with the people, neither can they let the people think for them
selves.
The same is not true, however, of revolutionary leaders; if
they do not think with the people, they become devitalized. The
people are their constituent matrix, not merely objects thought
of. Although revolutionary leaders may also have to think
about the people in order to understand them better, this
thinking differs from that of the elite; lor in thinking ajnout the
people in order to liberate (rather-lhan dominate) them, the
leaders give of themselves to the thinking of the people. One is
the thinking of the master} (he other is the thinking of the
comrade.
Domination, by its very nature, requires only a dominant
pole and a dominated pole in antithetical contradiction; revo
lutionary liberation, which attempts to resolve this contradic-
103
tion, implies the existence not only of these poles but also of a
leadership group which emerges during this attempt. This
leadership group either identifies itself with the oppressed state
of the people, or it is not revolutionary. To simply think afrorn
the people, a£ the dominators do, without any self-giving in that
thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease
being revolutionary leaders.
In the process of oppression the elites subsist on the ‘living
death’ of the oppressed and find their authentication in the
vertical relationship between themselves and the latter; in the
revolutionary process there is only one way for the emerging
leaders to achieve authenticity: they must ‘die’, in order to be
reborn Through and with the oppressed.
We can legitimately say that in the process of oppression
someone oppresses someone else; we cannot say that in the
process of revolution someone liberates someone else, nor yet
that someone liberates himself, but rather that men in com
munion liberate each other. This affirmation is not meant to
uhnefvalue'the Trnpoftance of revolutionary leaders but, on the
contrary, to emphasize their value. What could be more imporant than to live and work with the oppressed, with the ‘rejects
of life’, with the ‘wretched of the earth’? In this communion,
the revolutionary leaders should find not only their raison
d'etre but a motive for rejoicing. By their very nature, revolu
tionary leaders can do what the dominant elites - by their very
nature - are unable to do in authentic terms.
Every approach to the oppressed by the elites, as a class, is
couched in terms of the false generosity described in chapter 1.
But the revolutionary leaders cannot be falsely generous, nor
can they manipulate. Whereas the oppressor elites flourish by
trampling the people underfoot, the revolutionary leaders can
llourish only in communion wijh the people. Thus it is that the
' activity of the oppressor canndr be humanist, while that of the
revolutionary is necessarily so.
The inhumanity of the oppressorsand revolutionary human
ism both make use of science. But science and technology at the
service of the former are used to reduce men to the status of
‘things’; at the service of the latter, they are used to promote
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humanization. The oppressed must become Subjects of the
latter process, however, lest they continue to be seen as mere
objects of scientific interest.
Scientific revolutionary humanism cannot, in the name o
revolution, treat the oppressed as objects to be analysed and
(based on that analysis) presented with prescriptions for be
haviour. To do this would be to fall into one of the myths ot the
oppressor ideology; the absolutizing of ignorance. This myth
implies the existence of someone who decrees the ignorance of
someone else. The one who is doing the decreeing defines him
self and the class to which he belongs as those who know or
were born to know; he thereby defines others as alien entities.
The words of his own class come to be the ‘true’ words, which
he imposes or attempts to impose on the others: the oppressed,
whose words have been stolen from them. Those who steal the
words of others develop a deep doubt in the abilities ot the
others and consider them incompetent. Each time they say
their word without hearing the word of those whom they have
forbidden to speak, they grow more accustomed to power and
acquire a taste for guiding, ordering, and commanding. They
can no longer live without having someone to give orders to.
Under these circumstances, dialogue is impossible.
Scientific and humanist revolutionary leaders, on the other
hand, cannot believe in the myth of the ignorance of the people.
They’do not have the right to doubt for a single moment that it
is only a myth. They cannot believe that they, and only they,
know anything - for this means to doubt the people. Although
they may legitimately recognize themselves as having, due to
their revolutionary consciousness, a level of revolutionary
knowledge different from the level of empirical knowledge held
by the people, they cannot impose themsefves and their know’ ledge on the people. They cannot sloganize the people, but must
enter into dialogue w th them, so that the peoples empiiical
knowledge of reality, nourished by the leader •’ critical know
ledge. gradually becomes transformed into knowledge ol the
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causes of reality.
H would be naive to expect oppressor elites to denounce the
myth which absolutizes the ignorance of the people; it would
be a contradiction in terms if revolutionary leaders were not to
do so, and more contradictory still were they to act in accord
ance with that myth. The task of revolutionary leaders is to
pose as problems not only this myth, but all the other myths
used by the oppressor elites to oppress. If, instead, revolutionary
leaders persist in imitating the oppressors’ methods of domina
tion, the people may respond in either of two ways. In certain
historical circumstances, they may become domesticated by the
new contents which the leaders deposit in them. In other cir
cumstances, they may become frightened by a ‘word’ which
threatens the oppressor housed within them.7 In neither event
do they become revolutionary. In the first case, the revolution
is an illusion; in the second case, an impossibility.
Some well-intentioned but misguided persons suppose that
since the dialogical process is prolonged8 (which, incidentally,
is not true), they ought to carry out the revolution without
communication, by means of ‘communiques’, and that once
the revolution is won, they will then develop a. thoroughgoing
educational effort. They further justify this procedure by saying
that it is not possible to carry out education - liberating educacation - before taking power.
It is worth analysing some fundamental points of the above
assertions. These men (or most of them) believe in the necessity
for dialogue with the people, but do not believe this dialogue
7. Sometimes this ‘word’ is not even spoken. The presence of someone
(not necessarily belonging to a revolutionary group) who can threaten the
oppressor ‘housed’ in the people is sufficient for the latter to assume
destructive positions.
A student once told me how, in a certain Latin American peasant
community, a fanatical priest had denounced the presence in the com
munity of two ‘communists’ who were ‘endangering’ what he called
the ‘Catholic faith’. That very night the peasants, to a man, joined to
gether to burn alive the two simple elementary school teachers who had
been educating thp local children. Perhaps that priest had seen in the
house of the teachers a book with a bearded man on the cover. ..
8. Once more, I wish to emphasize that there is no dichotomy between
dialogue and revolutionary action. There is not one stage for dialogue and
another for revolution. On the contrary, dialogue is the essence of revo
lutionary action. In the theory of this action, the actors intersubjectively
direct their action upon an object (reality, which mediates them) with the
humanization of men (to be achieved by transforming that reality) as
their objective.
In the theory of oppressor action, antidialogical in essence, the above
scheme is simplified. The actors have as simultaneous objects of their
is feasible prior to taking power. When they deny the possibility
that the leaders can behave in a critically educational fashion
before taking power, they deny the revolution’s educational
quality as cultural action preparing to become cultural revolu
tion. On the other hand, they confuse cultural action with the
new education to be inaugurated once power is taken.
I have already affirmed that it would indeed be naive to
expect the oppressor elites to carry out a liberating education.
But because the revolution undeniably has an educational
nature, in the sense that unless it liberates it is not revolution,
.the taking of power is only one moment — no matter how
decisive - in the revolutionary process. As process, the ‘before*
of the revolution is located within the oppressor society and is
apparent only to the revolutionary consciousness.
The revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor
society; to the extent that it is cultural action, it cannot fail to
correspond to the potentialities of the social entity in which it
originated. Every entity develops (or is transformed) within
itself, through the interplay of its contradictions. External
conditioners, while necessary, are effective only if they coincide
with those potentialities.9 The newness of the revolution is
action both mz/Zzy and the oppressed, and the preservation of oppression
(through the preservation of oppressive reality) as their objective.
Theory of revolutionary acTion
Intersubjectivity____________
Theory of oppressive action
Subjects-actors Actors-subjects
(revolutionary (the oppressed)
leaders)
Actors-subjects
(dominant elites)
u
Interaction
[
I
/
Object: the
reality to be
preserved
Reality to Object
be trans ' which
formed
mediates
for
Objective Humaniza Objective
tion as a
permanent
process
9. Sec Mao’s Selected Works on this point.
Object
which
mediates
i
107
106
Object: the
oppressed (as
part of reality)
I J-
Objective-{he
preservation of
oppression
generated within the old, oppressive society; the taking of
power constitutes only a decisive moment of the continuing
revolutionary process. IrTa dynamicTrather than static, view of
revolution, there is no absolute ‘before’ or ‘after’, with the
taking of power as the dividing line.
Originating in objective conditions, revolution seeks to
supersede the situation of oppression by inaugurating a society
of men in the process of continuing liberation. The educational,
dialogical quality of revolution, which makes it a ‘cultural revo
lution’ as well, must be present in all its stages. This educational
quality is one of the most effective instruments for keeping the
revolution from becoming institutionalized and stratified in a
counter-revolutionary bureaucracy; for counter-revolution is
carried out by revolutionaries who become reactionary.
Were it not possible to dialogue with the people before power
is taken, because they have no experience with dialogue, neither
would it be possible for the people to come to power, for they
are equally inexperienced in the use of power. The revolutionary
process is dynamic, and it is in this continuing dynamics, in the
praxis of the people with the revolutionary leaders, that the
people and the leaders will learn both dialogue and the use of
power. (This is as obvious as affirming that a man learns to
swim in the water, not in a library.)
Dialogue with the people is neither a concession nor a gift,
much less a tactic to be used for domination. Dialogue, as the
encounter among men to ‘name’ the world, is a fundamental
precondition for their true humanization. In the words of Gajo
Petrovic:
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A free action can only be one by which a man changes his world and
himself. ... A positive condition of freedom is the knowledge of the
limits of necessity, the awareness of human creative possibilities....
The struggle for a free society is not a strtfggle for a free society unless
through it an ever greater degree of individual freedom is created.10
If this view be true, the revolutionary process is eminently
educational in character. Thus the road to revolution involves
openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves
communion with the people, not mistrust. And, as Lenin
10. From Socialist Humanism, edited by Eric Fromm (New York,
1965), pp. 274-6. Also see Pctrovic’s, Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century.
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Conquest
The first characteristic of antidialogical action is the necessity
for conquest. The antidialogical man, in his relations with other
men, aims at conquering them - increasingly and by every
means, from the toughest to the most refined, from the most
repressive to the most solicitous (paternalism).
Every act of conquest implies a conqueror and someone or
something which is conquered. The conqueror imposes his
objectives on the vanquished, and makes them his possession.
He imposes his own contours on the vanquished, who internal
ize this shape and become ambiguous beings ‘housing’ another.
From the first, the act of conquest, which reduces men to the
status of things, is necrophilic.
Just as antidialogical action is a concomitant of the real,
concrete situation of oppression, dialogical action is indispens
able to the revolutionary supersedence of that situation. A man
is not antidialogical or dialogical in the abstract, but in the
world. He is not first antidialogical, then oppressor; he is both,
simultaneously. Within an objective situation of oppression,
antidialogue is necessary to the oppressor as a means of further
oppression - not only economic, but cultural: the vanquished
are dispossessed of their word, their expressiveness, their
culture. Further, once a situation of oppression has been initi
ated, antidialogue becomes indispensable to its preservation.
Because liberating action is dialogical rn nature, dialogue can
not be a posteriori to that action, but must be concomitant with
it. And since liberation must be a permanent condition, dialogue
becomes a continuing aspect of liberating action.11
The desire for conquest (or rather the necessity of conquest)
is at all times present in antidialogical action. To this end the
oppressors attempt to destroy in men their quality as ‘considerers’ of the world. Since the oppressors cannot totally achieve
this destruction, they must mythicize the world. In order to
present for the consideration of the oppressed and subjugated
a world of deceit designed to increase their alienation and pas
sivity, the oppressors develop a series of methods precluding
any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it
rather as a fixed entity, as something given - something to which
men, as mere spectators, must adapt.
It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in
order to keep them passive via subjugation. This approxima
tion, however, does not involve being with the people, or require
true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors’
depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of thej/a/wj
quo', for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a ‘free
-society’; the myth that all men are free to work where they
wish, that if they don’t like their boss they can leave him and
look for another job; the myth that this order respects human
rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone
who is industrious can become an entrepreneur - worse yet, the
myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the
owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of
education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary
schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth
of the equality of all men, when the question: ‘Do you know
who you’re talking to?’ is still current among us; the myth of
the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of ‘Western
Christian civilization’ against ‘materialist barbarism’; the
myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they
really do as a class is to foster selective 1 good deeds’ (subse
quently elaborated into the myth of ‘disinterested aid’, which
on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John
XXIII);12 the myth that the dominant elites, ‘recognizing their
II. Once a popular revolution has come to power, the fact that the
new power has the ethical duty to repress any attempt to restore the old
oppressive power by no means signifies that the revolution is contradicting
its dialogical character. Dialogue between the former oppressors and the
oppressed as antagonistic classes was not possible before the revolution;
it continues to be impossible afterwards.
12. ‘ Moreover, economically developed countries should lake particular
ciM .• lot, in giving aid to poorer countries, they endeavour to turn the
pointed out, the more a revolution requires theory, the more
its leaders must be with the people in order to stand against the
power of oppression.
Based on these general propositions, let us undertake a more
lengthy analysis of the theories of antidialogical and dialogical
action.
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109
Ill
110
duties’* promote the advancement of the people, so that the
people^ in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words ol the
elites and conform to them; the myth that rebellion is a sin
against God; the myth of private property as fundamental to
persomal human development (so long as oppressors are the
only true human beings); the myth of the industriousness of the
oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the oppressed,
as well as the myth of the natural inferiority of the latter and the
superiority of the former.13
All these myths (and others the reader could list), the
internalization of which is essential to the subjugation of the
oppressed, are presented to them by well-organized propa
ganda and slogans, via the mass ‘communications’ media - as
if such alienation constituted real communication!14
In sum, there is no oppressive reality which is not at the same
time necessarily antidialogical, just as there is no antidialogue
in which the oppressors do not untiringly dedicate themselves
to the constant conquest of the oppressed. In ancient Rome,
the dominant elites spoke of the need to give ‘bread and cir
cuses’ to the people in order to ‘soften them up’ and to secure
their own tranquillity. The dominant elites of today, like those
of any epoch, continue (in a version of ‘original sin’) to need
to conquer others - with or without bread and circuses. The
content and methods of conquest vary historically; what does
not vary (as long as dominant elites exist) is the necrophilic
passion to oppress.
^^iHng political situation to their own advantage, and seek to dominate
lhShou!d perchance such attempts be made, this clearly would be but
another form of colonialism which, although disguised in name, merely
retlccts their earlier but outdated dominion, now abandoned by many
countries. When international rclations-are thus obstructed, the orderly
progress of all peoples is endangered From the Encyclical Letter Mater et
^13^ Memmi refers to the image the colonizer constructs of the colonized:
I
‘Bv his accusation the colonizer establishes the colonized as being lazy.
He decides that laziness is constitutional in the very nature of the colo-
n,Z]4 It is not the media themselves which I criticize, but the way they
aroused.
Divide and rule
This-4s-aftetlw^un4am©iU&l-4^
theory_o£_opprcssive action which is as old as oppression itself. As the
oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority,
it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.
The minority cannot permit itself the luxury of tolerating the
unification of the people, which would undoubtedly signify a
serious threat to their own hegemony. Accordingly, the op
pressors halt by any method (including violence) any action
which even in incipient fashion could awaken the oppressed to
the need for unity. Concepts such as unity, organization, and
struggle, are immediately labelled as dangerous. In fact, of
course, these concepts are dangerous - to the oppressors - for
their realization is necessary to actions of liberation.
It is in the interest of the oppressor to weaken the oppressed
still further, to isolate them, to create and deepen rifts among
them. This is done by varied means, from the repressive meth
ods of the government bureaucracy to the forms of cultural
action with which they manipulate the people by giving them
the impression that they are being helped.
One of the characteristics of oppressive cultural action which
is almost never perceived by the dedicated but naive protessionals who are involved is the emphasis on a focalized view of
problems rather than on seeing them as dimensions of a totality.
In ‘community development’ projects the more a region or area
is broken down into ‘local communities’, without the study ol
these communities both as totalities in themselves and as parts
of another totality (the area, region, and so forth) - which in its
turn is part of a still larger totality (the nation, as part of the
continental totality) --the more alienation is intensified. And
the more alienated-people arc, the easier it is to divide them and
keep them divided. These focalized forms of action, by inten
sifying the focalized way of life of the oppressed (especially in
rural areas), hamper the oppressed from perceiving reality
critically and keep them isolated from the problems of oppres
sed men in other areas.15
15. This criticism of course does not apply to actions within a dialectical
perspective, based on the understanding of the local community both as a
totality in itself and as part of a larger totality. It is directed at those who
II
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kS
re'
Mi'
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ill
The same divisive effect occurs in connection with the socalled ‘leadership training courses’, which are (although carried
out without any such intention by many of their organizers)
in the last analysis alienating. These courses are based on the
naive assumption that one can promote the community by
training its leaders - as if it were the parts that promote the
whole and not the whole which, in being promoted, promotes
the parts. Those members of the communities who show suf
ficient leadership capacities to be chosen for these courses
necessarily reflect and express the aspirations of the individuals
of their community. They are in harmony with the way of living
and thinking about reality which characterizes their comrades,
even though they reveal special abilities which give them the
status of ‘leaders’. As soon as they complete the course and
return to the community with resources they did not formerly
possess, they either use these resources to control the submerged
and dominated consciousness of their comrades, or they become
strangers in their own communities and their former leadership
position is thus threatened. In order not to lose their leadership
status, they will probably tend to continue manipulating the
community, but in a more efficient manner.//^
When cultural action, as a totalized and totalizing process,
approaches an entire community and not merely its leaders, the
opposite process occurs. Either the former leaders grow along
with everyone else, or they are replaced by new leaders who
emerge as a result of the new social consciousness of the com
munity.
The oppressors do not favour promoting the community as
a whole, but rather selected leaders. The latter course, by pres
erving a state of alienation, hinders the emergence of conscious
ness and critical intervention in a total reality. And without this ,
critical intervention, it is always difficult to achieve the unity
of the oppressed as a class.
do not realize that the development of the local community cannot occur
except in the total context of which it is a part, in interaction with other
parts. This requirement implies the consciousness of unity in diversifica
tion, of organization which channels forces in dispersion, and a clear
awareness of the necessity to transform reality. This (understandably) is
what frightens the oppressors.
113
Class conflict is another concept which upsets the oppressors,
since they do not wish to consider themselves an oppressive
class. Unable to deny, try as they may, the existence of social
classes, they preach the need for understanding and harmony
between those who buy and those who are obliged to sell their
labour.16 However, the unconcealable antagonism which exists
between the two classes makes this ‘harmony’ impossible.17
The elites call for harmony between classes as if classes were
fortuitous agglomerations of individuals curiously looking at a
shop window' on a Sunday afternoon. The only harmony which
is viable and demonstrable is that found among the oppressors
themselves. Although they may diverge and upon occasion even
clash over group interests, they unite immediately at a threat
to the class. Similarly, the harmony of the oppressed is only
possible when its members are engaged in the struggle for
liberation. Only in exceptional cases is it not only possible but
necessary for both classes to unite and act. in harmony; but
when the emergency which united them has passed they will
return to the contradiction which defines their existence and
which never really disappeared.
16. Bsshop Franic Spilt refers eloquently to this point: ‘If the workers
do not become in some way the owners of their labour, all structural re
forms will be ineffective. [This is true) even if the workers receive a higher
salary in an economic system but are not content with these raises. They
want to be owners, not sellers, of their labour.... At present the workers
are increasingly aware that labour represents a part of the human person.
A person, however,cannot be bought; neither can he sell himself. Any
purchase or sale of labour is a type of slavery. The evolution of human
society in this respect is clearly progressing within a system said to be less
responsive than our own to the question of human dignity, i.e., Marxism.’
17. With respect to social classes and the struggle between them (which
Karl Marx is often accused of inventing), see Marx’s letter to J. Weydemeyer dated 1. March 1852 in his and Engels’ Selected Works'.
. no
credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern
society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians
had described the historical development of this class struggle and bour
geois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that
was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up
with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that
the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat;
3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the aboli
tion of al! classes and t o classless society . .
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?
114
All the actions of the dominant class mamlest its need to
divide in order to facilitate the preservation of the oppressor
state. Its interference in the untotts-, faveurtng certain- representaiives’ of the dominated classes (who actually represent the
oppressor, not their own comrades); its promotion of individ
uals who reveal leadership capacity and could signify a threat
if they were not ‘softened up’ in this way; its distribution of
benefits to some and penalties to others: all these are ways o
dividing in order to preserve the system which favours the e ite.
They are forms of action which exploit, directly or indirectly,
one of the weak points of the oppressed: their basic insecurity.
The oppressed are insecure in their duality as beings whic
‘house’ the oppressor. On the one hand, they resist him; on the
other hand, at a certain stage in their relationship, they are
attracted by him. Under these circumstances, the oppressors
easily obtain positive results from divisive action.
In addition, the oppressed know from experience the price
of not accepting an invitation offered with the purpose of.
preventing their unity as a class: losing their jobs and finding
their names on a ‘black list' signifying closed doors to other
jobs is the least that can happen. Their basic insecurity is thus
directly linked to the enslavement ol their labour (which ically
implies the enslavement of their person, as Bishop
Bishop Spill
Spilt ememphasized).
* to
• ) the extent that they create their
Men are fulfilled only
world (which is a 1human
------- world), and create it with their transforming labour. The fulfillment of meni as men lies, then, in
u ~.... . of the world. If
the fulfillment
I." for
T. men to be in the world of
work is to bo totally dependent, insecure, and permanently
threatened - if their work docs not belong to them - men cannot
be fulfilled. Work which is notJrcc ceases to be a fulfilling pur
suit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization.
’ Every move by the oppressed towards unity points towards
other actions; it means that sooner or later the oppressed will
perceive their state of depersonalization and discover that as
long as they are divided they will always be easy prey for man
ipulation and domination. Unity and organization can enable
them to change their weakness into a transforming force
with which they can re-create the world, making it more
human.18 The more human world to which they justly aspire,
.*._j antithesis
of the ‘human world* of the oppresshowever, is the
a—
ld
which
is
the
exclusive
possession of the oppressors,
ors - a work
‘
l
an
impossible
harmony
between themselves (who
who preach
dehumanize) and the oppressed (who are dehumanized). Since
oppressors and oppressed are antithetical, what serves the
interests of one group is opposed to the interests of the other.
Dividing in order to preserve the status quo, then, is neces
sarily a fundamental objective of the theory of antidialogical
action. In addition, the dominators try to present themselves as
saviours of the men they dehumanize and divide. This messian
ism however, cannot conceal their true intention: to save them
selves. They want to save their riches, their power, their way of
life: the things that enable them to subjugate others. Their mis
take is that men cannot save themselves (no matter how one
understands ‘salvation’), either as individuals or as an oppres
sor class Salvation can be acb-ved only with others. To the
extent, however, that the elit-,, oppress, they cannot be with
the oppressed; for being against them is the essence of oppres-
sion.
i - tr i
A psychoanalysis of oppressive action might reveal tne la;se
vei'erositv’ of the oppressor (described in chapter 1) as a dimen
sion of the latter’s sense of guilt. With this false generosity, he
attempts not only to preserve an unjust and necrophilic order,
but to ‘buy’ peace for himself. It happens that peace cannot be
bought; peace is experienced in solidarity and loving acts, which
cannot ’be incarnated in oppression. Hence, the messianic ele
ment in the theory of antidialogical action reinforces, the first
characteristic of this action: the necessity for conquest.
Since it is necessary to divide the people in order to preserve
the status quo and, thereby, the power of the dominators, it is
18- For this reason it is indispensable for the oppressors to keep the
peasants isolated from the urban workers, just as it is indispensable to
keep both groups isolated from the students. The testimony of rebellion
of the latter (although they do not sociologically constitute a class) makes
them dangerous should they join the people. It is thus n'*6853'’? °
convince the lower classes that students are irresponsible and disorderly,
that their testimony is false because as students they should be studying
just as the factory workers and the peasants should be working towards
the1 nation’s progress’.
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116
essential for the oppressors to keep the oppre^ed from per
ceiving their strategy. So the former must cohvrice the latter
that they are being ‘defended’ against the demonic action of
‘marginals, rowdies and enemies of God’ (for "these are the
epithets directed at men who lived and are living the brave
pursuit of man’s humanization). In order to divide and confuse
the people, the destroyers call themselves builders, and accuse
the true builders of being destructive. History, however, always
takes it upon itself to modify these designations. Today, al
though the official terminology continues to call Tiradentes19
a conspirator (‘Inconfidente') and the libertarian movement
which he led a conspiracy (‘Inconfidencia'), the national hero
is not the man20 who called Tiradentes a ‘bandit’, ordered him
hanged and quartered, and had pieces of the bloody corpse
strewn through the streets of the neighbouring villages as an
example. Tiradentes is the hero. History tore up the ‘title’ given
him by (he elites, and recognized his action for what it was. It is
the men who in their own time sought unity for liberation who
are the heroes - not those who used their power to divide and
rule.
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Manipulation
Manipulation is another dimension of the theory of anti
dialogical action, and, like the strategy of division, is an instru
ment of conquest: the objective, around which all the dimen
sions of the theory revolve. By means of manipulation, the
dominant elites try to make the masses conform to their
objectives. And the greater the political immaturity of these
people (rural or urban) the more easily they can be manipulated
by those who do not wish to lose their power.
The people are manipulated by the series of myths described
earlier in this chapter, and by yet another myth,; the model of
itself the bourgeoisie presents to the people wj^ch spells out
possibility for their own ascent. In order for these myths to
19. Tiradentes was the leader of an abortive revolt for the independence
of Brazil from Portugal in 1789 in Ouro Preto, State of Minas Gerais.
This movement is historically called the Inconfidencia Mineira. (Trans
lator's note.)
20. Visconde de Barbaccna, royal administrator of the province.
(Translator's note.)
117
function, however, the people must accept the word of the
bourgeoisie.
Within certain historical conditions, manipulation is ac
complished by means of pacts between the dominant and the
dominated classes - pacts which, if considered superficially,
might give the impression of a dialogue between the classes.
In reality, however, these pacts are not dialogue, because their
true objectives are determined by the unequivocal interest of
the dominant elites. In the last analysis, pacts are used by the
dominators to achieve their own ends.21 The support given by
the people to the so-called ‘national bourgeoisie’ in defence of
so-called ‘national capitalism’ is an example in point. Sooner
or later, these pacts always increase the subjugation of the
people. They are proposed only when the people begin (even
naively) to emerge from this historical process and by this
emergence to threaten the dominant elites. The presence of the
people in the historical process, no longer as mere spectators,
but with the first signs of aggressiveness, is sufficiently dis
quieting to frighten the dominant elites into doubling the tactics
of manipulation.
In this historical phase, manipulation becomes a fundamental
instrument for the preservation of domination. Prior to the
emergence of the people there is no manipulation (precisely
speaking), but rather total suppression. When the oppressed
are almost completely submerged in reality, it is unnecessary to
manipulate them. In the antidialogical theory of action, mani
pulation is the response of the oppressor to the new concrete
conditions of the historical process. Through manipulation, the
dominant elites can lead the people into an unauthentic type of
‘organization’, and can thus avoid the threatening alternative:
the true organization of the -.emerged and emerging people.22
21. Raels are only valid for the masses (and in this case they are no
longer pacts) when the objectives of the action in process or to be de
veloped arc subject to their decision.
22. In (he ‘organization’ which results from acts of manipulation,
the people - mere guided objects - arc adapted to the objectives of the
manipulators. In true organization, the individuals are active in the
organizing process, and the objectives of the organization arc not imposed
by others. In the first case, the organization is a means of ‘massification’,
in the second, a means of liberation. [In Brazilian political terminology.
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118
i
The latter have only two possibilities as they enter the historical
process: either they must organize authentically for their
UbefatTon, or they will be nTarriputatcd by the efttcsr-Airthentie—
organization is obviously not going to be stimulated by the
dominators; it is the task of the revolutionary leaders.
It happens, however, that large sectors of the oppressed form
an urban proletariat, especially in the more industrialized
centres of the country. Although these sectors are occasionally
restive, they lack revolutionary consciousness and consider
themselves privileged. Manipulation, with its series of deceits
and promises, usually finds fertile ground here.
The antidote to manipulation lies in a critically conscious
revolutionary organization, which will pose as problems to the
people their position in the historical process, the national
reality, and manipulation itself. In the words of Francisco
WefTert:
All the policies of the Left are based on the masses and depend on
the consciousness of the latter. If that consciousness is confused, the
Left will lose its roots and certain downfall will be imminent, although
(as in the Brazilian case) the Left may be deluded into thinking it
can achieve the revolution by means of a quick return to power.
In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always temp
ted by a ‘quick return to power’, forgetting the necessity of
joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and thus
straying into an impossible ‘dialogue’ with the dominant elites.
It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequent
ly itself falls into an elitist game, which it calls ‘realism’.
Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves,
attempts to anaesthetize the people so they will not think. For if
the people join to their presence in the historical process critical
thinking a^out that process, the threat of their emergence
materializes in revolution. Whether one calls this correct
thinking ‘revolutionary consciousness’ or ‘class consciousness’,
it is an indispensable precondition of revolution. The dominant
elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all
means, including physical violence, to keep the people from
thinking. They have a shrewd intuition of the ability of dialogue
‘mussification’ is the process of reducing the people to a manageable,
unthinking agglomeration. Translator.
119
to develop a capacity for criticism. While some revolutionary
leaders consider dialogue with the people a ‘bourgeois and
react io nary ’ act ivity, t he bourgeo is ie rega rdd ia logue bet wee n
the oppressed and the revolutionary leaders as a very real danger
to be avoided.
One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individ
uals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This
manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites
and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders. As Weffert
points out, these leaders serve as intermediaries between the
oligarchical elites and the people. The emergence of populism
as a style of political action thus coincides causally with the
emergence of the oppressed. The populist leader who rises from
this process is an ambiguous being, an ‘amphibian’ who lives
in two elements. Shuttling back and forth between the people
and the dominant oligarchies, he bears the marks of both
groups.
Since the populist leader simply manipulates, instead of
fighting for authentic popular organization, this type of leader
serves the revolution little if at all. Only by abandoning his
ambiguous character and dual action and by opting decisively
for the people (thus ceasing to be populist) does he renounce
manipulation and dedicate himself to the revolutionary task of
organization. At this point he ceases to be an intermediary
between the people and the elites, and becomes a contradiction
of the latter; thereupon the elites immediately join forces to
curb him. Observe the dramatic and finally unequivocal terms
in which Getulio Vargas23 spoke to the workers at a 1 May
celebration during his last period as head of state:
I want to tell you that the gigantic work of renewal which my Ad
ministration is beginning to carry out cannot be completed success
fully without the support and the daily, steadfast cooperation of the
workers.24
23. Getulio Vargas led the revolution which overthrew the Brazilian
President Washington Luis in 1930. He remained in power as a dictator
until 1945. In 1950 he returned to power as elected president. In August
1954, when the opposition was about to overthrow him, he committed
suicide. (Translator'snote.')
24. Speech given in Vasco da Gama Stadium on 1 May 1950, O Governo
Trabalhista no Brasil (Rio), pp. 322-24.
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Vargas then spoke of his first ninety days in office, which he
called ‘an estimate of the difficulties and obstacles which, here
and there, are being raised in opposition to the actions of the
government’. He spoke directly to the people about how deeply
he felt ‘the helplessness, poverty, the high cost of living, low
salaries ... the hopelessness of the unfortunate and the demands
of the majority who live in hope of better days’.
His appeal to the workers, in the same speech, then took on
more objective tones:
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I have come to say that at this moment the Administration does not
yet have the laws or the concrete instruments for immediate action to
defend the people’s economy. It is thus necessary for the people to
organize - not only to defend their own interests, but also to give the
government the base of support it requires to carry out its objectives
... 1 need your unity. I need you, in solidarity, to organize yourselves
in unions. I need you to form a strong and cohesive bloc to stand
beside the government so that it will have all the force it needs to
solve your problems. I need your unity so you can fight against
saboteurs, so you do not fall prey to the interests of speculators and
rapacious scoundrels .n detriment of the interests of the people.
The hour has come to appeal to the workers; unite in your unions as
free and organized forces ... at the present time no administration
can survive or dispose oj sufficient force to achieve its social ends ifit
does not have the support oj the labouring organizations.25
In sum, Vargas in this speech appealed vehemently to the
people to organize and to unite in defence of their rights; and
he told them, as Chief of State, of the obstacles, the hindrances,
and the innumerable difficulties involved in governing with
them. From that moment on his administration encountered
increasing difficulties, until the tragic climax of August 1954.
If Vargas had not in his last term shown such open encourage♦ment to the organization of the people, subsequently linked to
a series of measures in defence of the national interest, possibly
the reactionary elites would not have taken the extreme meas
ures they did.
Any populist leader who moves (even discreetly) towards the
people in any way other than as the intermediary of the olig
archies will be curbed by the latter - if they have sufficient force
25. Emphasis added.
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to stop him. But as long as the leader restricts himself to pater
nalism and social welfare activities, although there may be
occasional divergencies between him and groups of oligarchies
whose interests have been touched, deep differences are rare.
This is because welfare programmes as instruments of manipu
lation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an
anaesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of
their problems and from the concrete solutions of these prob
lems. They splinter the oppressed into groups of individuals
hoping to get a few more benefits for themselves. This situation
contains, however, a positive element: the individuals who
receive some aid always want more; those who do not receive
aid, seeing the example of those who do, grow envious and also
want assistance. Since the dominant elites cannot ‘aid’ every
one, they end by increasing the restiveness of the oppressed.
The revolutionary leaders should take advantage of the con
tradictions of manipulation by posing it as a problem to the
oppressed, with the objective of organizing them.
Cultural invasion
The theory of antidialogical action has one last fundamental
characteristic: cultural invasion, which like divisive tactics and
manipulation also serves the ends of conquest. In this pheno
menon, the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another
group, and ignoring the potential of the latter, they impose
their own view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit
the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression.
Whether urbane or harsh, cultural invasion is thus always an
act of violence against the persons of the invaded culture, who
lose their originality or face the threat of losing it. In cultural
invasion (as in all the modalities of antidialogical action) the
invaders are the authors of, and actors in, the process; those
they invade are the objects. The invaders mould; those they
invade are moulded. The invaders choose; those they invade
follow (hat choice - or arc expected to follow it. The invaders
act; (hose they invade have only (he illusion of acting, through
the action of the invaders.
All domination involves invasion - at times physical and
overt, at times camouflaged, with the invader assuming the
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role of a helping friend. In the last analysis, invasion is a form
of economic and cultural domination. Invasion may be practised by a metropolitan society upon-a dependent society, or
it may be implicit in the domination of one class over another
within the same society.
Cultural conquest leads to the cultural inauthenticity of those
who are invaded; they begin to respond to the values, the
standards, and the goals of the invaders. In their passion to
dominate, to mould others to their patterns and their way of
life, the invaders desire to know how those they have invaded
apprehend reality - but only so that they can dominate the latter
more effectively.26 In cultural invasion it is essential that those
who are invaded come to see their reality with the outlook of the
invaders rather than their own; for the more they mimic the
invaders, the more stable the position of the latter becomes.
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those
invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority. Since
everything has its opposite, if those who are invaded consider
themselves inferior, they must necessarily recognize the super
iority of the invaders. The values of the latter thereby become
the pattern for the former. The more invasion is accentuated
and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own
culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like
the invaders: to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them.
The social ‘T of the invaded person, like every social ‘I’, is
formed in the socio-cultural relations of the social structure, and
therefore reflects the duality of the invaded culture. This duality
(which was described earlier) explains why invaded and domin
ated individuals, at a certain moment of their existential ex
perience, almost ‘adhere’ to the oppressor ‘Thou’. The op
pressed ‘I’ must J?reak with.this near adhesion to the oppressor
‘Thou’, drawing away from the latter in order to see him more
objectively, at which point he critically recognizes himself to be
in contradiction with the oppressor. In so doing, he ‘considers’
26. To this end, the invaders arc making increasing use of the social
sciences and technology, and to some extent the physical sciences as well,
to improve and refine their action It is indispensable for the invaders to
know the past and present of those invaded in order to discern the alter
natives of the latter’s future and thereby attempt to guide the evolution
of that future along lines that will favour their own interests.
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as a dehumanizing reality the structure in which he is being
oppressed. This qualitative change in the perception of the
world can only be achieved in the praxis.
Cultural invasion is on the one hand SLrrinstrumenTof domination, and on the other, the result of domination. Thus, cul
tural action of a dominating character (like other forms of
antidialogical action), in addition to being deliberate and plan
ned, is in another sense simply a product of oppressive reality.
For example, a rigid and oppressive social structure neces
sarily influences the institutions of child rearing and education
within that structure. These institutions pattern their action
after the style of the structure, and transmit the myths of the
latter. Homes and schools (from nurseries to universities) exist
not in the abstract, but in tinle and space. Within the structures
of domination they function largely as agencies which prepare
the invaders of the future.
The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the
objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social struc
ture. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authori
tarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate
of oppression.27 As these authoritarian relations between parents
and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly
internalize the paternal authority.
Presenting (with his customary clarity) the problem of
necrophilia and biophilia, Fromm analyses the objective con
ditions which generate each condition, whether in the home
(parent-child relations in a climate of indifference and oppres
sion or of love and freedom), or in a socio-cultural context. If
children reared in an atmosphere of lovelessness and oppression,
27. Young people increasingly view parent and teacher authoritarianism
as inimical to their own freedom. For this very reason, they increasingly
oppose forms of action which minimize their expressiveness and hinder
their self-affirmation This very positive phenomenon is nert accidental.
It is actually a symptom of the historical climate which (as mentioned in
chapter 1) characterizes our epoch as an anthropological one. For this
reason one cannot (unless one has a personal, interest in doing so) see the
youth rebellion as a mere example of the traditional diflcrences between
generations. Something deeper is involved here. Young people in their
rebellion are denouncing and condemning the unjust model of a society
of domination. This rebellion with its special dimension, however, is very
recent; society continues to be authoritarian in character.
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children whose potency has been frustrated, do not manage
during their youth to take the path of authentic rebellion,
they will either drift into total indifference, alienated from reality
by the authorities and the myths the latter have used to ‘shape’
them; or they may engage in forms of destructive action.
The home atmosphere is continued in the school, where the
students soon discover (as in the home) that in order to achieve
some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have
been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.
Internalizing parental authority through the rigid relation
ship structure emphasized by the school, these young people
tend when they become professionals (because of the very fear
of freedom instilled by these relationships) to repeat the rigid
patterns in which they were miseducated. This phenomenon, in
addition to their class position, perhaps explains why so many
professionals adhere to antidialogical action.28 Whatever the
specialty that brings them into contact with the people, they are
almost unshakeably convinced that it is their mission to ‘give’
the latter their knowledge and techniques. They see themselves
as ‘promoters’ of the people. Their programmes of action
(which might have been prescribed by any good theorist of
oppressive action) include their own objectives, their own con
victions, and their own preoccupations. They do not listen to
the people, but instead plan to teach them how to ‘cast off the
laziness which creates underdevelopment’. To these profes
sionals, it seems absurd to consider the necessity of respecting
the ‘view of the world’ held by the people. The professionals
are the ones with a ‘world view’. They regard as equally absurd
the affirmation that one must necessarily consult the people
when organizing (he programme content of educational action.
They feel that the ignorance of the people is so complete that
they are unfit for anything except to receive the teachings of the
professionals.
When, however, at a certain point of their existential experi28. It perhaps also explains the an lid ialogical behaviour of persons
who, although convinced of their revolutionary commitment, continue
to mistrust the people and fear communion with them. Unconsciously,
such persons retain the oppressor within themselves; and because they
‘house ’ the master, they fear freedom.
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ence, those who have been invaded begin in one way or another
to reject this invasion (to which they might earlier have adapt
ed), the professionals, in order to justify their failure, say that
the members of the invaded group are ‘inferior’ because they
are ‘ingrates’, ‘shiftless’, ‘diseased’, or of‘mixed blood’.
Well-intentioned professionals (those who use ‘invasion’ not
as deliberate ideology but as the expression of their own up
bringing) eventually discover that certain of their educational
failures must be ascribed, not to the intrinsic inferiority of the
‘simple men of the people’, but to the violence of their own act
of invasion. Those who make this discovery face a difficult
alternative: they feel the need to renounce invasion, but patterns
of domination are so entrenched within them that this renuncia
tion would become a threat to their own identities. To renounce
invasion would mean ending their dual status as dominated
and dominators. It would mean abandoning all the myths
which nourish invasion, and starting to incarnate dialogical
action. For this very reason, it would mean to cease being over
or inside (as foreigners) in order to be with (as comrades). And
so the fear of freedom lakes hold of these men. During this
traumatic process, they naturally tend to rationalize their fear
with a series of evasions.
The fear of freedom is greater still in professionals who have
not yet discovered for themselves the invasive nature of their
action, and who are told that their action is dehumanizing. Not
infrequently, especially at the point of decoding concrete situa
tions, participants in our training course ask the coordinator in
an irritated manner: ‘Where do you think you’re steering us,
anyway?’ The coordinator isn’t trying to ‘steer’ them any
where; it is just that in lacing a concrete situation as a problem,
the participants begin to realize that if their analysis of the'
situation goes any deeper they wih either have to divest them
selves of their myths, or reaffirm them. Divesting themselves of
and renouncing their myths represents, at that moment, an act
of self-violence. On the other hand, to reaffirm those myths is
to reveal themselves. As I explain in Introduction a la Action
Cultural, the only way out (which functions as a defence mech
anism) is to project onto the coordinator their own usual
practices: steering, conquering, and invading.
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29. Regarding the activities of this institution, sec Mary Cole’s Summer
beings. (If they had come from the lower classes this misedu
cation would be the same, if not worse.) These professionals,
however, are necessary to the reorganization of the new society.
And since many among them — even though ‘ afraid of freedom
and reluctant to engage in humanizing action - are in truth more
misguided than anything else, they not only could be, but ought
to be, reclaimed by the revolution.
This reclamation requires that the revolutionary leaders,
progressing from what was previously dialogical cultural action,
initiate the ‘cultural revolution’. At this point, revolutionary
power moves beyond its role as a necessary obstacle confronting
those who wish to negate men, and assumes a new aind bolder
position, with a clear invitation to all who wish to participate in
the reconstruction of society. In this sense, ‘cultural revolution’
is a necessary continuation of the dialogical cultural action
which must be carried out before the revolution reaches power.
‘Cultural revolution’ takes the total society to be reconstruct
ed, including all human activities, as the object of its remoulding
action. Society cannot be reconstructed in a mechanistic
fashion; the culture which is culturally re-created through revo
lution is the fundamental instrument for this reconstruction.
‘Cultural revolution’ is the revolutionary regime’s maximum
effort at conscientization - it should reach everyone, regardless
of his task.
Consequently, this eflbrt at conscientization cannot rest
content with the technical or scientific training of intended
specialists. The new society becomes qualitatively distinct from
the old31 in more than a partial way. Revolutionary society
cannot attribute to technology the same ends attributed by the
previous society; accordingly, the training of men in the two
societies must also differ. Technical and scientific training need
not be inimical to humanistic education as long as science and
technology in the revolutionary society are at the service of
permanent liberation, of humanization.
From this point of view, the training of men for any occupa
tion (since all occupations occur in time and space) requires
the understanding of, firstly, culture as a superstructure which
Althusser, For Marx, in which he dedicates an entire
31. This process, however, does not occur suddenly, as mechanistic
thinkers naively assume.
This same retreat occurs, though on a smaller scale, among
men of the people who have been ground down by the concre e
Nation of oppression and domesticate-d-by chanty One of
the teachers of Full Circle?’ which carried out a valuable edu
cational programme in New York City under the coordmation
of Robert Fox, relates the following incident. A group ma New
York ghetto was presented a coded situation showmg a btg pile
If garbage on a street corner - the very same street where the
group was meeting. One of the participants sa.d at once I e
a street in Africa or Latin America.’ And wh>^notm N
York9’ asked the teacher. ‘Because we are the United States
Ind that can’t happen here.’ Beyond a doubt this man and some
of his comrades who agreed with him were retreating; from a
reality so offensive to them that even to acknowledge
reality was threatening. For an alienated person, conditioned
by a culture of achievement and personal success, to recognize
hl Situation as objectively unfavourable seems to hmder h.s
°WIn the case cited, and in that of the professionals, the deter
mining force of the culture which develops the myths men
lubsejuently internalize is evident. In both cases, the culture o
the dominant class hinders the affirmation of men as beings
decision. Neither the professionals nor the d.scussion partici
pants in the New York slums talk and act for themselves as
active Subjects of this historical process. None of them arc
theoreticians or ideologues of domination. On the contrary,
they arc effects which in turn become causes of domination
This is one of the most serious problems the revolution must
confront when it reaches power. This stage demands maximum
political wisdom, decision, and courage from the leaders who
for this very reason must hdvc sufficient judgement not to tall
into irrationally sectarian positions.
•
Professional men of any discipline, university 8radu“te^ or
not are men who have been ‘determmed from above ■ by a
culture of domination which has constituted them as dual
chapter to the dialetics ofsupcrdelermination’.
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can maintain ‘remnants’ of the past, as Althusser puts it, alive
in the substructure undergoing revolutionary transformation
and, secondly, the occupation itself as an instrument for the
transformation of culture. As the cultural revolution deepens
conscientization in the creative praxis of the new society, men
will begin to perceive why mythical remnants of the old society
survive in the new. And men will then be able to free themselves
more rapidly of these spectres, which by hindering the edifica
tion of a new society have always constituted a serious problem
for every revolution. Through these cultural remnants the
oppressor society continues to invade - this time invading the
revolutionary society itself.
This invasion is especially terrible because it is carried out
not by the dominant elite reorganized as such, but by men who
have participated in the revolution. As men who ‘house’ the
oppressor, they resist as might the latter themselves the further
basic steps which the revolution must take. And as dual beings
they also accept (still due to the remnants of old feeling) power
which becomes bureaucratized and which violently represses
them. In turn, this violently repressive bureaucratic power can
be explained by what Althusser calls the ‘reactivation of old
elements’32 in the new society each time special circumstances
permit.
For all the above reasons, I interpret the revolutionary pro
cess as dialogical cultural action which is prolonged in ‘cultural
revolution’ once power is taken. In both stages a serious and
profound effort at conscientization is necessary. It is the neces
sary means by which men, through a true praxis, leave behind
the status of objects to assume the status of historical Subjects.
Finally, cultural revolution develops the practice of per
manent dialogue between leadcrs,and people, and consolidates
the participation of the people in power. In this way, as both
leaders and people continue their critical activity, the revolution
will more easily be able to defend itself against bureaucratic
tendencies (which lead to new forms of oppression) and against
‘invasion’ (which is always the same). The invader - whether
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32. On this matter, Althusser comments, this reactivation would be
impossible where the dialetic did not have ‘superdetermination
in a bourgeois or in a revolutionary society - may be an agrono
mist or a sociologist,.an economist or a public health engineer,
a priest or a pastor, an educator or a social worker - or a
revolutionary.
Cultural invasion, which serves the ends of conquest and the
preservation of oppression, always involves a parochial view of
reality, a static perception of the world, and the imposition
of one world view upon another. It implies the ‘superiority’
of the invader and the ‘inferiority’ of those who are invaded, as
well as the imposition of values by the former, who possess the
latter and are afraid of losing them.
Cultural invasion further signifies that the ultimate seat of
decision regarding the action of those who are invaded lies not
with them but with the invaders. And when the power of decision
is located outside rather than within the one who should decide,
the latter has only the illusion of deciding. This is why there can
be no socio-economic development in a dual, ‘reflex’, invaded
society. For development to occur it is necessary: firstly that
there be a movement of search and creativity having its seat
of decision in the searcher; secondly that this movement occur
not only in space, but in the existential time of the conscious
searcher.
Thus, while all development is transformation, not all trans
formation is development. The transformation occurring in a
seed which under favourable conditions germinates and sprouts,
is not development. In the same way, the transformation of an
animal is not development. The transformations of seeds and
animals arc determined by the species to which they belong;
and they occur in a time which does not belong to them, for
time belongs to men.
Men, among the uncompleted beings, arc the only ones which
develop. As historical' autobiographical, ‘beings for‘them
selves’, their transformation (development) occurs in their own
existential time, never outside it. Men who are submitted to
concrete conditions of oppression in which they become alien
ated ‘beings for another’ of the false ‘being for himself’ on
whom they depend, arc not able to develop authentically.
Deprived of their own power of decision, which is located in the
oppressor, they follow the prescriptions of the latter. The
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oppressed only begin to develop when, surmounting the con
tradiction in which they are caught, they become ‘beings for
—t hemselves ’.
If we consider society as a being, it is obvious that only a
. society which is a ‘being for itself’ can develop. Societies which
are dual, ‘reflex’, invaded, and dependent on the metropolitan
society cannot develop because they arc alienated; their politi
cal, economic, and cultural decision-making power is located
outside themselves, in the invader society. In the last analy
sis, the latter determines the destiny of the former: mere
transformation; for it is their transformation - not their devel
opment — that is in the interest of the metropolitan society.
It is essential not to confuse modernization with develop
ment. The former, although it may affect certain groups in the
‘satellite society’, is almost always induced; and it is the metro
politan society which derives the true benefits therefrom. A
society which is merely modernized without developing will con
tinue - even if it takes over some minimal delegated powers of
decision - to depend on the outside country. This is the fate of
any dependent society, as long as it remains dependent.
In order to determine whether or not a society is developing,
one must go beyond criteria based on indices of per capita .
income (which, expressed in statistical form, are misleading) as
well as those which concentrate on the study of gross income.
The basic, elementary criterion is whether or not the society
is a ‘being for itself’. If it is not, the other criteria indicate
modernization rather than development.
The principal contradiction of dual societies is the relation
ship of dependency between them and the metropolitan society.
Once the contradiction has been superseded, the transformation
hitherto effected through ‘aid’, which has primarily benefited
the metropolitan society, becomes true development,.which
benefits the‘being for'itself’.
For the above reasons, the purely reformist solutions at
tempted by these societies (even though some of the reforms
may frighten and even panic the more reactionary members of
the elite groups) do not resolve their external and internal con
tradictions. Almost always the metropolitan society induces
these reformist solutions in response to the demands of the
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historical process, as a new way of preserving its hegemony.
It is as if the metropolitan society were saying: ‘Let us carry
out reforms before the people carry out a revolution.’ And in
order to achieve this goal, the metropolitan society has no
options other than conquest, manipulation, economic and cul
tural (and sometimes military) invasion of the dependent
society - an invasion in which the elite leaders of the dominated
society to a large extent act as mere brokers for the leaders of
the metropolitan society.
To close this tentative analysis of the theory of antidialogical
action, I wish to reaffirm that revolutionary leaders must not
use the same antidialogical procedures used by the oppressors;
on the contrary, revolutionary leaders must follow the path of
dialogue and of communication.
Before proceeding to analyse the theory of dialogical action,
it is essential to discuss briefly how the revolutionary leadership
group is formed, and some of the historical and sociological
consequences for the revolutionary process. Usually this leader
ship group is made up of men 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 men renounce the class to which they belong
and join the oppressed, in an act of true solidarity (or so one
would hope). Whether or not this adherence results from a
scientific analysis of reality, it represents (when authentic) an
act of love and true commitment.33 Joining the oppressed re
quires 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.
The leaders who have emerged necessarily reflect the contra
diction of the dominant elites communicated to them by the
oppressed, who may not yet, however, clearly perceive their
own state of oppression or critically recognize their relationship
of antagonism to the oppressors.34 They may still be in the
33. The thoughts ol Guevara on this subject are given in the preceding
chapter. German Guzman says of CamiloTorrcs: ‘... he gave everything.
At all times he maintained a vital posture of commitment to the people - as
a priest, as a Christian, and as a revolutionary.’
34. ‘ Class necessity ’ is one thing; ‘classconsciousness’ is another.
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position previously termed ‘adhesion’ to the oppressor. On the
other hand, it is possible that due to certain objective historical
conditions they have already reached a relatively clear percep
tion of their state of oppression.
In the first case, the adhesion - or partial adhesion - of the
people to the oppressor makes it impossible for them (to repeat
Fanon’s point) to locate him outside themselves. In the second
case, they can locate the oppressor and can thus critically
recognize their relationship of antagonism to him.
In the first case, the oppressor is ‘housed’ within the people,
and their resulting ambiguity makes them fearful of freedom.
They resort (stimulated by the oppressor) to magical explana
tions or a false view of God, to whom they fatalistically transfer
the responsibility for their oppressed state.35 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 ol the will of God, as
an unwarranted confrontation with destiny. (Hence the oftemphasized necessity of posing as problems the myths fed to the
people by the oppressors.) In the second case, 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’.
In the first case, the revolutionary leaders unfortunately and
involuntarily become the contradiction of the people. In the
second case, the emerging leaders receive from the people
sympathetic and almost instantaneous support, which tends to
increase during the process of revolutionary action. The leaders
go to the people in a spontaneously dialogical manner. There is
an almost immediate empathy between the people and the
rcvolutionaryjeaders: their mutual commitment is almost
instantly sealed. In fellowship, they consider themselves co35. A Chilean priest of high intellectual and moral calibre visiting
Recife in 1966 told me: ‘When a Pernambucan colleague and I went to
sec several lamilics living in shanties [rnocambos} in indescribable poverty,
I asked them how they could bear to live like that, and the answer was
always the same: “What can I do? It is the will of God and I must accept
it”.’
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equal contradictions of the dominant elites. From this point on,
the established practice of dialogue between people and leaders
is nearly unshakeable. That dialogue will continue when power
is reached; and the people will know that they have come to
power.
This sharing in no way diminishes the spirit of struggle, cour
age, capacity for love, or daring required of the revolutionary
leaders. Fidel Castro and his comrades (whom many at the
time termed ‘irresponsible adventurers’), an eminently dialogi
cal leadership group, identified with the people who endured
the brutal violence of the Batista dictatorship. This adherence
was not easy; it required bravery on the part of the leaders to
love the people sufficiently to be willing to sacrifice themselves
for them. It required courageous witness by the leaders to
recommence after each disaster, moved by undying hope in a
future victory which (because forged together with the people)
would belong not to the leaders alone, but to the leaders and
the people - or to the people, including the leaders.
Fidel gradually polarized the adherence of the Cuban people,
who due to their historical experience had already begun to
break their adhesion to the oppressor. This ‘drawing away’
from the oppressor led the people to objectify him, and to see
themselves as his contradiction. So it was that Fidel never
entered into contradiction with the people. (The occasional
desertions or betrayals registered by Guevara in his Relato de la
Guerra Revolucionaria - in which he also refers to the many who
adhered - were to be expected.)
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. As we have seen, the
hitler situation is forced on the leaders when the people have
not yet achieved a critical perception of oppressive reality.
Almost never, however, does a revolutionary leadership
group perceive that it constitutes a contradiction to the people.
Indeed, this perception is painful, and the resistance may serve
as a defence mechanism. After all, it is not easy for leaders who
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have emerged through adherence to the oppressed to recognize
themselves as being in contradiction to those to whom they
adhered. It is important to recognize this rcluotane^when-anafysing certain forms of behaviour on the part of revolutionary
leaders who involuntarily become a contradiction (although not
antagonists) of the people.
-In order to carry out the revolution, revolutionary leaders
undoubtedly require the adherence of the people. When leaders
who constitute a contradiction to the people seek this adherence,
and find rather a certain aloofness and mistrust, they often
regard this reaction as indicating an inherent defect on the part
of the people. They interpret a certain historical moment of the
people’s consciousness as evidence of their intrinsic deficiency.
Since the leaders need the adherence of the people so that the
revolution can be achieved (but at the same time mistrust the
mistrustful people), they are tempted to utilize the same pro
cedures used by the dominant elites to oppress. Rationalizing
their lack of confidence in the people, the leaders say that it is
impossible to dialogue with the people before taking power,
thus opting for the antidialogical theory of action. Thence
forward -just like the dominant elites - they try to conquer the
people: they,become messianic; they use manipulation and.
carry out cultural invasion. By advancing along these paths,
the paths of oppression, they will not achieve revolution; or if
they do, it will not be authentic revolution.
The role of revolutionary leadership (under any circumstan
ces, but especially so in those described) 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 themselves
critically perceive the reality which oppresses them.
The dominated consciousness is dual, ambiguous, full of
fear and mistrust?6 In his Diary about the struggle in Bolivia,
Guevara refers several times to (lie Sack of ireasaul participa
tion:
3'6. On tins point, see Erich Fromm, ‘The application of humanist
psychoanalysis to Marxist theory', in Smin/isi Humanism and Reuben
Onsbor’s Marxism and Psychoanalysis.
The peasant mobilization does not exist, except for informative duties
which annoy us somewhat. They are neither very rapid nor very
efficient; they can be neutralized. ... Complete lack of incorporation
of the peasants, although they are losing theirTear of us and we anr
succeeding in winning their admiration. It is a slow and patient task.
The internalization of the oppressor by the dominated con
sciousness of the peasants explains their fear and their ineffici
ency.
The behaviour and reactions of the oppressed, which lead the
oppressor to practise cultural invasion, should evoke from the
revolutionary a different theory of action. What distinguishes
revolutionary leaders from the dominant elite is not only their
objectives, but their procedures. If they act in the same way,
the objectives become identical. It is as self-contradictory for
the dominant elites to pose men-world relations as problems to
the people as it is for the revolutionary leaders not to do so.
Let us now analyse the theory of dialogical cultural action
and attempt to apprehend its constituent elements.
Cooperation
In the theory of antidialogical action, conquest (as its primary
characteristic) involves a Subject who conquers another person
and transforms him into a ‘thing’. In the dialogical theory of
action. Subjects meet in cooperation in order to transform the
world. The antidialogical, dominating ‘1’ transforms the domin
ated, conquered ‘thou’ into a mere ‘it’ in Martin Buber’s
phraseology. The dialogical ‘I’, however, knows that it is
precisely the ‘thou’ (‘not-‘I’) which has called forth his own
existence. He also knows that the ‘thou’ which calls forth his
own existence in turn constitutes an ‘I’ which has in his T’ its
‘thou’. The ‘I’ and the ‘thou’ thus become, in the dialectic'of
these relationships, two ‘ (housl which become two ‘ Is’.
Thd dialogical theory of action does not involve a Subject,
who dominates by virtue of conquest, and a dominated object,
instead, there arc Subjects who meet to i\ame the world in
order to transform it. If al a certain historical moment the
oppressed, for the reasons previously described, are unable to
fulfill their vocation as Subjects, the posing of their very opp
ression as a problem (which always involves some form of
action) will help them achieve this vocation.
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The above does not mean that in the dialogical task there is
no role for revolutionary leadership. It means merely, that the
eaders - in spite of their important, fundamental and indis
pensable role - do not own the people and have no right to
steer the people blindly towards their salvation. Such a salva
tion would be a mere gift from the leaders to the people - a
breaking of the dialogical bond between them, and a reducing
of the people from co-authors of liberating action into the
objects of this action.
Cooperation, as a characteristic of dialogical action - which
occurs only among Subjects (who may, however, have diverse
levels of functions and thus of responsibility) - can only be
achieved through communication. Dialogue, as essential com
munication, must underlie any cooperation. In the theory of
dialogical action, there is no place for conquering the people on
behalf of the revolutionary cause, but only for gaining their
adherence. Dialogue does not impose, does not manipulate, does
not domesticate, does not ■sloganize’. This does not mean
however, that the theory of dialogical action leads nowhere ; nor
oes it mean that the dialogical man does not have a clear idea
of what he wants, or of the objectives to which he is committed.
The commitment of the revolutionary leaders to the oppressed is at the same time a commitment to freedom. And because
of that commitment, the leaders cannot attempt to conquer the
oppressed, but must gain their adherence to liberation Con
quered adherence is not adherence; it is ‘adhesion’ of the
vanquished to the conqueror, who prescribes the options open
to the former. Authentic adherence is the free coincidence of
c toices; it cannot occur apart from communication among men
mediated by reality.
Thus cooperation leads dialogical Subjects to focus their
attention on the reality which mediates them and which - posed
as a problem - challenges them. The response to that chaflenge'
is the action ol dialogical Subjects upon reality in order to
transform it. Let me re-emphasize that posing reality as a probem does not mean sloganizing; it means critical analysis of a
problematic reality.
As opposed to the mythicizing practices of the dominant
elites, 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, as the
former perceive the dedication and authenticity of the latter.
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 pur
suit of liberation. But they must always mistrust the ambiguity
of oppressed men, mistrust the oppressor‘housed’ in the latter.
Accordingly, when Guevara exhorts the revolutionary to be
always mistrustful37 he is not disregarding the fundamental
condition of the theory of dialogical action. He is merely being
a realist.
Although trust is basic to dialogue, it is not an a priori
condition of the latter: it results from the encounter in which
men are co-Subjects in denouncing the world, as part of the
world’s transformation. But 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! The leaders cannot be credulous, but must be
alert for these possibilities. Guevara’s Episodes confirms these
risks: not only desertions, but even betrayal of the cause. At
times in this document, while recognizing the necessity of punL-ihirig the deserter in order to preserve the cohesion and dis
cipline of the group, Guevara also recognizes certain factors
which explain the desertion. One of them, perhaps the most
important, is the deserter’s ambivalence.
Another portion of Guevara’s document, which refers to his
37. Guevara to El Patojo, a young Guatcmakecan leaving Cuba to
engage in guerrilla activity in his own country: * Mistrust: at the beginning
do not trust your own shadow, never (rust Iriendiy peasants, informers,
guides, or contact men. Do not trust anything or anybody until a zone is
completely liberated.’ (Episodesuj the Revolutionary l^ar.)
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presence (not only as a guerrilla but as a medical doctor) in a
peasant community in the. Sierra Maestra and relates to our
discussion of cooperation, is quite striking.
As a result of daily contact with these people and their problems we
became firmly convinced of the need for a complete change in the life
of our people. The idea of an agrarian reform became crystal clear.
Communion with the people, ceasing to be a mere theory, became an
integral part of ourselves.
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Guerrillas and peasants began to merge into a solid mass. No one
can say exactly when, in this long process, the ideas became reality
and we became a part of the peasantry. As far as 1 am concerned, the
contact with my patients in the Sierra turned a spontaneous and some
what lyrical decision into a more serene force, one oj an entirely different value Those poor, suffering, loyal inhabitants of the Sierra cannot
even imagine what a great contribution they made to the forging of
our revolutionary ideology.3S
Note Guevara’s emphasis that communion with the people
was decisive for the transformation of a ‘spontaneous and somewhat lyrical decision into a more serene force, one of an
entirely different value’. It was, then, in dialogue with the
peasants that Guevara’s revolutionary praxis became definitive.
What Guevara did not say, perhaps due to humility, is that it
was his own humility and capacity to love that made possible
his communion with the people. And this indisputably dialog
ical communion became cooperation. Note that Guevara (who
did not climb the Sierra Maestra with Fidel and his comrades as
a frustrated youth in search of adventure) recognizes that his
'communion with the people ceased to be a mere theory, to
become an integral part of [himself]’. He stresses how Irom the
moment of that communion the peasants became forgeis o!
his guerrillas’ ‘revolutionary ideology’.
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Even Guevara’s unmistakable style of narrating his and his
comrades’ experiences, of describing his contacts with the
‘poor, loyal’ peasants in almost evangelical language, reveals
this remarkable man's deep capacity for love and communica
tion. Thence emerges the force of his ardent testimony to the
work of another loving man:: Camilo Torres, ‘the guerrilla
priest*.
Without the communion which engenders true cooperation,
the Cuban people would have been mere objects of the revolu
tionary activity of the men of the Sierra Maestra, and as
objects, their adherence would have been impossible. At the
most, there might have been ‘ adhesion but that is a component
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of domination, not revolution.
In dialogical theory, at no stage can revolutionary action
forgo communion with the people. Communion in turn elicits
cooperation, which brings leaders and people to the fusmn
described by Guevara. This fusion can exist only if revolution
ary activity 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 .
also an unnatural living death', life which is denied its fullness??
It should not be necessary here to cite statistics to show how
many Brazilians (and Latin Americans in general) are living
corpses, shadows of human beings, hopeless men, women and
children victimized by an endless invisible war*” in which their
remnants of life are devoured by tuberculosis, schistosomiasis,
infant diarrhoea ... by the myriad diseases of poverty (most of
which, in the terminology of the oppressors, are called ‘tropical
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Father Chenu in Temoignage Chretien makes the following
comments regarding possible reactions to situations as extreme
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as the above:
Many both among the priests attending the Council and the informed
laymen fear that in facing the needs and suffering of the world we
may simply adopt an emotional protest in favour of palhatmg the
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SO With regard to man’s defences against his own death, following the
death of Cod’, in current thought, see Mikel Dufrenne, Pour
40 John Gerassi wrote in The Great FearC Many (peasants] sell them
selves or members of their families into slavery to escape [survahon].
One Belo Horizonte newspaper discovered as many as 50,000 vicums
(sold for $1,500,000). and one reporter, to prove it, bought a man and his
wife lor $10. "I have seen many a good man starve, explained the slave,
"ihat is why I did not mind being sold.” When one slave dealer was
arresled in Sao Paulo in 1959. he admitted having contracts with Sio Paulo
ranchers.colfee plantations, and construction projects for his commodity
except teenage girls, who were sold to brothels.
38. Emphasis added.
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manifestations and symptoms of poverty and injustice without going
on to analyse the causes of the latter to denounce a regime which
encompasses this injustice and engenders this poverty.
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Unity for liberation
Whereas in the antidialogical theory of action the dominators
are compelled by necessity to divide the oppressed, the more
easily to preserve the state of oppression, in the dialogical theory
the 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 difficulty is that this category of dialogical action (like
the others) cannot occur apart from the praxis. The praxis of
oppression is easy (or at least not difficult) for the dominant
elite; it is not easy, however, for the revolutionary leaders to
carry out a liberating praxis. The former group can rely on
using the instruments of power; the latter group has this power
directed against it. The former can organize itself freely, and
though it may undergo fortuitous and momentary divisions, it
unites rapidly in the face of any threat to its fundamental
interests. The latter cannot exist without the people, and this
very condition constitutes the first obstacle to its efforts at
organization.
It would indeed be inconsistent of the dominant elite to allow
the revolutionary leaders to organize. The internal unity of the
dominant elite, which reinforces and organizes its power,
requires that the people be divided; the unity of the revolution
ary leaders only exists in the unity of the people among them
selves and in turn with them. The unity of the elite derives from
its antagonism with the people; the unity of the revolutionary
leadership group grows out of communion with the (united)
people. The concrete situation oEoppression - which dualizes
the ‘ I ’ of the oppressed person, thereby making him ambiguous,’
emotionally unstable, and fearful of freedom - facilitates the
divisive action of the dominator by hindering the unifying action
indispensable to liberation.
Further, domination is itself objectively divisive. It maintains
the oppressed ‘I’ in a position of‘adhesion’ to a reality which
seems all-powerful and overwhelming, and then alienates him
by presenting mysterious forces to explain this power. Part of
the oppressed ‘I’ is located in the reality to which he ‘adheres’;
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part is located outside himself, in the mysterious forces which
he regards as responsible for a reality about which he can do
nothing. He is divided between an identical past and present,
and a future without hope. He is a person who does not perceive
himself as becoming', hence he cannot have a future to be built
in unity with others. But as he breaks his ‘adhesion’ and objecti
fies the reality from which he starts to emerge, he begins to
integrate himself as a Subject (an ‘I’) confronting an object
(reality). At this moment, sundering the false unity of his divid
ed self, he becomes a true individual.
To divide the oppressed, an ideology of oppression is indis
pensable. In contrast, achieving their unity requires a form of
cultural action through which they come to know the why and
•flow of their adhesion to reality - it requires de-ideologizing.
Hence, the effort to unify the oppressed does not call for mere
ideological ‘sloganizing’. The latter, by distorting the authentic
relation between the Subject and objective reality, also separates
the cognitive, the affective, and the active aspects of the total,
indivisible personality.
The object of dialogical-libertarian action is not to ‘dislodge’
the oppressed from a mythological reality in order to ‘bind’
them to another reality. On the contrary, the object of dialogical
action is to make it possible for the oppressed, by perceiving
their adhesion, to opt to transform an unjust reality.
Since the unity of the oppressed involves solidarity among
them, regardless of their exact status, this unity unquestionably
requires class consciousness. However, the submersion in reality
which characterizes the peasants of Latin America means that
consciousness of being an oppressed class must be preceded (or
at least accompanied) by achieving consciousness of being
oppressed individuals.41
Proposing as a problem, to a European peasant, the fact that •
he is a person might strike him as strange. This is not true of
Latin-American peasants, whose world usually ends at the
41. For someone to achieve critical consciousness of his status as an
oppressed man requires critical recognition of his reality as an oppressive
reality. For this very reason, it requires reaching the ‘comprehension de
ressenev de la societe', which is for Lukdcs 'an facteur de puissance de
toul premier ordre, pour quoi e'est meme suns doute Varme puremenl el
simplcment divisive. . .' (Histo ire el Conscience de Classe).
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boundaries of the latifundium, whose gestures to some extent
simulate those of the animals and the trees, and who often consider themselves equal to the latter.------------------- --------- —
Men who are bound to nature and to the oppressor m this
way must come to discern themselves as persons prevented from
being. And discovering themselves means in the first instance
' discovering themselves as Pedro, as Antonio, or as Josefa. This
discovery implies a different perception of the meaning of
designations: the words, ‘world’, ‘men’, ‘culture’, ‘tree ,
‘work’ ‘animal’, reassume their true significance. The peasants
now sec themselves as transformers of reality (previously a
mysterious entity) through their creative labour. They discover
that - as men - they can no longer continue to be ‘things
possessed by others ; and they can move from consciousness of
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individuals
to the
themselves
oppressed
individuals
to consciousness of an
0PAnySattempt to unify the peasants based on activist methods
which rely on ‘slogans’ and do not deal with these fundamental
aspects produces a mere juxtaposition of individuals, giving a
purely mechanistic character to their action. The unity of the
oppressed occurs at the human level, not at the level of things.
It occurs in a reality which is only authentically comprehended
in the dialectic between the sub- and superstructure.
In order for the oppressed to unite, they must first cut the
umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the
world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other
must be of a different nature. To achieve this indispensable
unity the revolutionary process must be, from the beginning,
cultural action. The methods used to achieve the unity of the
oppressed will depend on the latter’s historical and existential
experience within the social structure.
Peasants live in a ‘closed’ reality with a single, CQmpact
centre of oppressive decision; the urban oppressed live-in an
expanding context in which the oppressive command centre is
plural and complex. Peasants are under the control of a domi
nant figure who incarnates the oppressive system; in urban
areas, the oppressed arc subjected to an ‘oppressive imperson
ality’. In both cases the oppressive power is to a certain extent
•‘invisible’: in the rural zone, because of its proximity to the
oppressed; in the cities, because of its dispersion.
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Forms of cultural action in such different situations as these
have nonetheless the same objective: to clarify to the oppressed
the objective situation which binds them to the oppressors,
-wsibleor not. Only forms of action which avoid mere speech- making and ineffective ‘blah’ on the one hand, and mechan
istic activism on the other, can also oppose the divisive action
of the dominant elites and move towards the unity of the
oppressed.
Organization
In the theory of antidialogical action, manipulation is indis
pensable to conquest and domination; in the dialogical theory
of action the organization of the people presents the antagon
istic opposite of this manipulation. Organization .s not only
directly linked to unity, but is a natural development of that
unity Accordingly, the leaders’ pursuit of unity is necessarily
also an attempt to organize the people, requiring witness to the
fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task. Th.s con
stant, humble and courageous witness emerging from coopera
tion in a shared effort-theliberationof men-avoidsthe danger
of antidialogical control. The form of witness may vary, depend
ing on the historical conditions of any society; witness itself,
however, is an indispensable element of revolutionary action.
In order to determine the what and how ol that witness, it is
therefore essential to have an increasingly critical knowledge
of the current historical context, the view of the world held
by the people, the principal contradiction of society, and the
principal aspect of that contradiction. Since these dimensions
of witness are historical, dialogical, and therefore dialectical,
witness cannot simply import them from other contexts without
previously analysing its own. To do otherwise is to absolutize
and mythologize the relative;-alienation then becomes unavoid
able’ Witness, in the dialogical theory of action, is one ol the
principal expressions of the cultural and educational character
of the revolution.
The essential elements of witness which do not vary historic
ally include: consistency between words and actions; boldness
which urges the witness to confront existence as a permanent
risk; radicalization (not sectarianism) leading both the witness
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and the ones receiving that witness to increasing action;
courage to love (which, far from being accommodation to an
unjust world, is rather the transformation of that world on be
half of the increasing liberation of men); and faith in the people,
since it is to them that witness is made - although witness to the
people, because of their dialectical relations with the dominant
elites, also affects the latter (who respond to that witness in
their customary way).
All authentic (that is, critical) witness involves the daring to
run risks, including the possibility that the leaders will not
always win the immediate adherence of the people. Witness
which has not borne fruit at a certain moment and under
certain conditions is not thereby rendered incapable of bearing
fruit tomorrow. Since witness is not an abstract gesture, but an
action - a confrontation with the world and with men - it is
not static. It is a dynamic element which becomes part of the
societal context in which it occurred; from that moment, it
does not cease to affect that context.43
In antidialogical action, manipulation anaesthetizes the
people and facilitates their domination; in dialogical action
manipulation is superseded by authentic organization. In
antidialogical action, manipulation serves the ends of conquest;
in dialogical action, daring and loving witness serve th
of
organization.
For the dominant elites, organization means organizing
themselves. For the revolutionary leaders, organization means
organizing themselves with the people. In^thFTrst event,' the
dominant elite increasingly structuresits power so that it can
more efficiently dominate and depersonalize; in the second,
organization only*corresponds to its nature and objective if in
itself it constitutes the practice of freedom. Accordingly, the
discipline necessary to any organization must not be confused
vvi^^gimentadpn. It is-quite true'that’without leadership,
discipline, determination, and objectives -’ without tasks to
lullill and accounts to be rendered - an organization cannot
survive, and revolutionary action is thereby diluted. This fact,
however, can never justify treating the people as things to be
42. Regarded as process, authentic witness which does not bear im
mediate fruit cannot be judged an absolute failure. The men who butchered
Tiradentes could quarter his body, but they could not erase his witness.
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used. The people are already depersonalized by oppression if the revolutionary leaders manipulate them, instead of working
towards their conscientizatioi^ they negate the very objective of
organization (that is, liberation).
Organizing the people is the process in which the revolution
ary leaders, who are also prevented from saying their own
word,43 initiate the experience of learning how to name the
world. This is true learning experience, and therefore dialogical.
So it ss that the leaders cannot say their word alone; they must
say it with the people. Leaders who do not act dialogically, but
insist on imposing theirdecisions, do not organize the people they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liber5.ted: they oppress.
The fact that the leaders who organize the people do not
have the right to arbitrarily impose their word does not mean
that they must therefore take a liberalist position which would
encourage licence among the people, who are accustomed to
oppression. The dialogical theory of actio’n opposes both .
authoritarianism and licence, and thereby affirms authority and
freedom. There is no freedom without authority, but there is
also no authority without freedom. All freedom contains the
possibility that under special circumstances (and at different
existential levels) it may become authority. Freedom and
authority cannot be isolated, but must be considered in relation
ship to each other.44
Authentic authority is not affirmed as such by a mere transfer
of power, but through delegation or in sympathetic adherence.
11 authority is merely transferred from one group to another,
or is imposed upon the majority, it degenerates into authori
tarianism. Authority can avoid conflict with freedom only if it is
Trcedom-bccome-aulhority’. Hypertrophy of the one provokes
43. Dr Orlando Aguirre Ortiz/Director of a Medical School at a
Cuban university, once told me: ‘The revolution involves three ‘P’s’:
palavra, povo, e pdlvora [word, people, and gunpowder). The explosion
ot the gunpowder clears the people’s perception of their concrete situation,
in pursuit, through action, of their liberation.’ It was interesting to observe
how this revolutionary physician stressed the hwy/in the sense it has been
used in this essay: as action and rellcction.as praxis.
44. This relationship will be conlliclive if the objective situation is one
ofoppression or of licence.
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atrophy of the other. Just as authority cannot exist without
freedom, and vic^yersa^authoritarianism cannot e2cisTwithout
denying freedom, nor licence without denying authority.
In the theory of dialogical action, organization requires
authority, so it cannot be authoritarian; jt requires freedom, so
iTcahnoT^eTicelitTous. Organization jsTrather, a highly educatidnal process in which leaders and people together experience
True authority and freedom, which they then seek to establish
in society by transforming the reality which mediates them.
Cultural synthesis
Cultural action js_always a systematic andjdchberate form of
^fon^?cEQ^atesjipcHi_ffie social structure, either with the
objective of preserving that structure or of transforming it. As
zTform of deliberate and systematic action, all cultural action
has its theory which determines its__ends-and thereby defines its
methods. Cultural action either serves domination (consciously
or unconsciously) or it serves the Jiberat ion of men. As these
dialectically opposed types of cultural action operate in and
upon the social structure, they create dialectical relations of
permanence and change.
’ The social structureTin order to be, must becomeijn other
words, becoming is the way the social structure expresses
'duration' in the Bergsonian sense of the term.45
Dialogical cultural action does not have as its aim the dis
appearance of the permanence-change dialectic (an impossible
aim, since disappearance of the dialectic would require the dis
appearance of the social structure itself and thus of men); it
aims, rather, at sunnountjngjhe antagonistic cont rad ict[o ns of
the social structure, thereby achieving the liberation of men.
Antidialogical cultural action, on the other hand, aims at
mythicizing such contradictions-, thereby hoping to avoid (or
hinder in so far as possible) the radical transformation of
reality. Antidialogical action explicitly or implicitly aims to
II
45. What makes a structure a social structure (and thus historicalcultural) is neither permanence nor change, taken absolutely, but the
dialectical relations between the two. In the last analysis, what endures
in the social structure is neither permanence nor change; it is the
permanence-change dialectic itself.
preserve, within the social structure, situations which favour its
own agents. While the latter would never accept a transformation of the structure sufficiently radical to overcome its anta
gonistic contradictions, they may accept reforms which do not
affect their power of decision over the oppressed. Hence, this
modality of action involves the conquest of the people, their
division, their manipulation, and cultural invasion. It is necessary
and fundamentally an induced action. Dialogical action, how
ever, supersedes any induced aspect. The incapacity of antidialogical cultural action to supersede its induced character
results from its objective: domination; the capacity of dialogical
cultural action to do this lies in its objective: liberation.
In cultural invasion, 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 oi
those they invade. In cultural synthesis, the actors who come
from ‘another world’ to the world of the people do so not as
invaders. They do not come to teach or to transmit or to give
anything, but rather to learn, with the people, about the people’s
world.
In cultural invasion the actors (who need not even go per
sonally to the invaded culture; increasingly, their action is
carried out by technological instruments) superimpose them
selves on the people, who are assigned the role of spectators, of
objects. 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 actors’ action. In cultural synthesis,
there are no spectators; the object of the actors’ action is the
reality to be transfonned for the liberation of men.
Cultural synthesis is thus a mode of action for confronting
‘ culture itself, as the preserver of the very structures by which it
was formed. Cultural action, as historical action, is an instru
ment for superseding the dominant alienated and alienating
culture. In this sense, every authentic revolution is a cultural
revolution.
The investigation of the people’s generative themes or mean
ingful thematics described in chapter 3 constitutes the starting
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point for the process of action as cultural synthesis. Indeed, it
is not really possible to divide this process into two separate
steps: first, thematic investigation, and then action as cultural
synthesis. Such a dichotomy would imply an initial phase in
which the people, as passive objects, would be studied, ana
lysed, and investigated by the investigators - a procedure con
gruent with antidialogical action. Such division would lead to
the naive conclusion that action as synthesis follows from action
as invasion.
In dialogical theory, this division cannot occur. The Subjects
of thematic investigation are not only the professional investi
gators but also the men of the people whose thematic universe
is being sought. Investigation - the first moment of action as
cultural synthesis - establishes a climate of creativity which will
tend to develop in the subsequent stages of action. Such a
climate does not exist in cultural invasion, which through
alienation kills the creative enthusiasm of those who are in
vaded, leaving them hopeless and fearful of risking experi
mentation, without which there is no true creativity.
Those who are invaded, whatever their level, rarely go beyond
the models which the invaders prescribe for them. In cultural
synthesis there are no invaders; hence, there are no imposed
models. In their stead, there are actors who critically analyse
reality (never separating this analysis from action) and inter
vene as Subjects in the historical process.
Instead of following predetermined plans, leaders and people,
mutually identified, together create the guidelines of their
action. In this synthesis, leaders and people are somehow reborn
in new knowledge and new action. Knowledge of the alienating
culture leads to transforming action resulting in a culture
which is being freed from alienation. The more sophisticated
knowledge of the leaders is remade in the empirical knowledge
of the people, while the latter is refined by the former.
In cultural synthesis - and only in cultural synthesis - it is
possible to resolve the contradiction between the world view
of the leaders and that of the people, to the enrichment of
both. Cultural synthesis does not deny the differences between
the two views; indeed, it is based on these differences. It does
deny the invasion of one by the other, but affirms the undeniable
support each gives to the other.
149
Revolutionary leaders must avoid organizing themselves
apart from the people; whatever contradiction to the people
may occur fortuitously, due to certain historical conditions,
must be solved - not augmented by the cultural invasion of an
imposed relationship. Cultural synthesis is the only way.
Revolutionary leaders commit many errors and miscalcula
tions by not taking into account something as real as the people’s
view of the world: a view which explicitly and implicitly con
tains their concerns, their doubts, their hopes, their way of
seeing the leaders, their perceptions of themselves and of the
oppressors, their religious beliefs (almost always syncretic),
their fatalism, their rebellious reactions. None of these elements
can be seen separately, for in interaction all of them compose a
totality. The oppressor is interested in knowing this totality
only as an aid to his action of invasion in order to dominate or
preserve domination. For the revolutionary leaders, the know
ledge of this totality is indispensable to their action as cultural
synthesis.
Cultural synthesis (precisely because it is a synthesis) does
not mean that the objectives of revolutionary action should be
limited by the aspirations expressed in the world view of the
people. If this were to happen (in the guise of respect for that
view), the revolutionary leaders would be passively bound to
that vision. Neither invasion by the leaders of the people’s
world view nor mere adaptation by the leaders to the (often
naive) aspirations of the people is acceptable.
To be concrete: if at a given historical moment the basic
aspiration of the people goes no further than a demand for
salary increases, the leaders can commit one of two errors.
They can limit their action to stimulating this one demand46
or they can overrule this popular aspiration and substitute
something more far-reaching - but something which has not
yet come to the forefront of the people’s attention. In the first
case, the revolutionary leaders follow a line of adaptation to the
people’s demands. In the second case, by not respecting the
aspirations of the people, they fall into cultural invasion.
46. Lenin, in ‘ What is to be done?’, severely attacked the tendency of
the Russian Social Democratic Party to emphasize the economic demands
of the proletariat as an instrument ol the revolutionary struggle, a practice
he termed ‘economic spontaneity .
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The solution lies in synthesis: the leaders must on the one
hand identify with the people’s demand for higher salaries,
whi Ie on the otheOhey must set the meaning of that very
demand as a problem. By doing this, the leaders pose as a
problem a real, concrete, historical situation of which the salary
demand is one dimension. It will thereby become clear that
^.salary demands alone cannot comprise a definitive solution.
The essence of this solution can be found in the previously
cited statement by bishops of the Third World that ‘if the
workers do not somehow come to be owners of their own labour,
all structural reforms will be ineffective ... they [must] be
owners, not sellers, of their labour ... [for] any purchase or
sale of labour is a type of slavery’.
To achieve critical consciousness of the facts that it is neces
sary to be the ‘owner of one’s own labour’, that labour ‘con
stitutes part of the human person’, and that ‘a human being
can neither be sold nor can he sell himself’, is to go a step
beyond the deception of palliative solutions. It is to engage in
authentic transformation of reality in order, by humanizing
that reality, to humanize men.
In the antidialogical theory of action, cultural invasion
serves the ends of manipulation, which in turn serves the ends
of conquest, and conquest serves the ends of domination.
Cultural synthesis serves the ends of organization; organization
serves the ends of liberation.
This work deals with a very obvious truth: just as the op
pressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive
action, so the oppressed, in order to become free, also need a
theory of action.
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.
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Also available from Penguin Education
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Cultural Action for Freedom
Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire’s Cultural Action for Freedom is the educational
process itself, and, particularly and crucially, teaching literacy to
adults. Within his definition of that process learners assume from
the beginning the role of creative subjects. Learning is not a matter
of memorizing and repeating given words, syllables and phrases, but
rather of reflecting critically on the process of reading and writing
itself and on the profound significance of language. As the most
important vehicle of cultural transmission language, and therefore
liteiacy, must be used, developed and given meaning by those whose
will it must express.
!
In seeking to challenge the conceptual and cultural domination
that prevailed in the slums and villages of Latin America, Freire
developed a highly original and spectacularly successful method of
teaching literacy. In this book he outlines the principles which
underlay that method and their implications.
' S •»
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Deschooiing Society
Ivan D. Illich
Is schooling the same thing as education ? Obviously not. We all
learn day by day, and most of us, to be honest, can find little in our
lives which schooling has directly and profoundly influenced.
Two questions emerge. What is it then that has given schooling
such enormous and widespread prestige in all societies
throughout the world ? And what is it that schooling actually does
if its educational function is in doubt ?
Ivan Illich argues in this eloquent and persuasive book that school
has the prestige it does because it is one of the major means by
which the status quo is preserved. It is not only inefficient in terms
of education, but also profoundly divisive. Deschooling Society has
already become a classic statement of a new and disturbing view of
the school as an institution. It is amply possible to disagree with
Illich; it is hardly possible to ignore him.
Celebration of Awareness
A Call for Institutional Revolution
Ivan D. Illich
‘ I and many others, known and unknown to me, call upon you:
To celebrate our joint power to provide all human beings with the
food, clothing and shelter they need to delight in living.
To discover, together with us, what we must do to use mankind’s
power to create the humanity, the dignity and the joyfulness of
each one of us.
To be responsibly aware of your personal ability to express your
true feelings and to gather us together in their expression.’
This ‘call to celebration’ begins the first essay in this book, and
sets the keynote for a series of essays, each of which, in I llich’s
words, record ‘ an effort of mine to question the nature of some
certainty ’. Pre-eminent among such questionable certainties is the
value of institutions: charitable foundations, the Church, schools all are subject to a remarkably fresh and radical insight.
Some Penguin Education Specials
of related interest
School is Dead
Everett Reimer
Most of the children in the world are not in school. Most of those
who are drop out as soon as possible. Most countries in the world
can only afford to give their children the barest minimum of
education, while the costs of schooling are everywhere rising faster
than enrolments, and faster than national income. Schools are for
most people what the author calls ‘institutional props for privilege’,
and yet at the same time they are the major instruments of social
mobility. But at v. hat cost in terms of true learning, true creativity,
true democracy ? And at what ultimate cost to the societies which
perpetuate themselves in this way ?
This is the background to Everett Reimer’s important, wide-ranging
and intelligent book. The most urgent priority, he argues, is for a
consideration alternatives in education - alternative content,
organization and finance. Above all, we urgently need alternative
views of education itself, its nature and possible functions in the
society of the future.
36 Children
Herbert Kohl
Herbert Kohl’s 36 children were black twelve year olds in
New York’s Harlem. From their standpoint school was an
irrelevance, to be treated sometimes with humour,
sometimes with lethargy, sometimes with dull, impotent/
insolent anger. From the standpoint of the educational
establishment they were ‘the unteachable’. Herbert Kohl
was their teacher.
His achievement was to gain the confidence of his children
and to demonstrate that the world was more open to them
than their ghetto surroundings might suggest. Their innate
exuberance and liveliness come through in the series of
writings and drawings which form a major part of this book.
As Herbert Kohl makes clear, the process of educating
necessitated orofound changes in his own sense of himself
as a teacher and a person. Few books on education give
such an inward view of what it is like to face an impossible
teaching situation and, in some measure, to come through.
‘Desperate, angry, heartrending.... What Mr Kohl
discovered during that year... is relevant to teaching
anywhere: marvellously exciting.’ Edward Blishen in the
Aeiv Statesman
‘Illich and Reimer have asked some of the profoundest questions
about education today’
lan Lister The Times Higher Education Supplement
‘The case against universal compulsory schooling is a substaniai
one and Everett Reimer thumps it out in chapter after chapter’
Christopher Price Mov Statesman
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