Danilo R. Streck is a lecturer on the Postgraduate Programme in Education at UNISINOS (University of the Sinos Valley, Brazil). With a PHD in Education from Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA), he undertook post-doctoral studies at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). He has been a guest lecturer at Siegen University (Germany), Toronto University (Canada) and at Javeriana University, Colombia. He has written books such as: Educational Trends: An Interdisciplinary Focus  and Education in the Meeting of Times: Essays Inspired by Paulo Freire. He is co-editor of the Paulo Freire Dictionary and editor of Latin-American Education Sources: A Real Anthology and of the International Research-Action Magazine.

 Contacto: UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, RS, Brasil. dstreck@unisinos.br

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During the 50 year commemoration of the Popular Culture Movement (PCM) in the Federal University of Pernambuco, where Paulo Freire began his university teaching career, someone in the plenary session asked if the PCM should be buried. To this question, one of the panellists answered that such a hypothesis would never be considered because of all that the movement stood for in terms of people’s cultural demonstration. His colleague argued the opposite: it should be buried as it is done with the seed that sprouts new fruit. Possibly, both are right in the sense that the investigation as well as the concreting of ideas and practices do not correspond with the cultural and historic being that Paulo Freire refers to in his text, and from which we have extracted some paragraphs for this dialogue.

 The 40 years since its publication coincide with a time of numerous and deep changes in Latin America; ranging from a demographic shift from rural to urban predominance, to a relative achievement of democratisation. Paulo Freire played a lead role in this “partejamento” (communion) –as he liked to say– in the way he liked to join practice with reflection, whether as a popular teacher, an advisor for a policy reform in Chile, a pedagogical consultant in the World Council of Churches, a university professor in several countries or as an Education Secretary in Sao Paulo. His writings reveal his ability to reinvent himself within the movement of history, as is reflected in the titles of his works in which Pedagogy of the oppressed became Pedagogy of the question (Pedagogía de la pregunta), Pedagogy of Freedom, Pedagogy of Indignation and many others.

This implies that to revise this text, which has survived over four decades, it is necessary to pay special attention to the dialectics between consistencies and changes within his works. The first point to note is Freire’s concern for what he calls the “act of cognition”. This theme recurs in his works and appears further on in the form of rigorous methodology on a true thought. Above all, it relates to a way bring together two cognisable objects, as subjects “creators, instigators, worriers, the extremely curious, the humble and the persistent”. The reference for this stringency is always practical, allowing Freire pass through a set of mutually incompatible theories.

The reference for this thoroughness is always the culture, by which Freire seemed to be charmed. For this, verifying some recurrent expressions in his work is enough: education understood as a cultural action for freedom; the existence of a culture of silence that must be overcome through the achievement of the right to free speech; no less than a cultural revolution is necessary so that the oppressed constitute another interpersonal and social reality. The novelty of the Freirean vision of culture is the link with the classist structure of Latin American societies, and the dependent relationship with countries from the “first world”.

The discussion regarding culture advanced in two directions which not always convey together. On one hand, oppression –as well as liberation– became understood as a multifaceted process. The same class society is also a society which discriminates coloured people, women, indigenous people, generations, etc. Culture, therefore, becomes the basis for the recognition of the differences between people and social groups, thus leading to the veiling, on numerous occasions, of the focus on equality that was always at the centre of Paulo Freire’s concerns. The recognition of differences, however, does not exclude the fight for equality, which Paulo Freire expresses with the phrase: “united in diversity”. Today, to say the word in the search of equality is attached to the differences.

Another divide in this discussion can be seen in the works of other authors such as Aníbal Quijano, Enrique Dussel and Walter D. Mignolo, amongst others – who actually centre their discussions in coloniality as a phenomenon that manifests itself as much in the unequal distribution of power as in the epistemic oppression carried out on behalf of the modern Eurocentrism. Another divide in this discussion can be seen in the works of other authors such as Aníbal Quijano, Enrique Dussel and Walter D. Mignolo, amongst others – who actually centre their discussions in coloniality as a phenomenon that manifests itself as much in the unequal distribution of power as in the epistemic oppression carried out on behalf of the modern Eurocentrism. Any other possibilities will be excluded” [1]. This is a discussion which goes into depth regarding the criticisms that Freire makes in his text on “the transplant by the invaders”, with a more proactive nature, valuing the original cultures currently seen as a source for the search of other ways of living, living together and, in the end, surviving.

A legacy of Paulo Freire’s discussion is to preserve the link established between culture and politics, thus comes the reading of macro levels (relationships between countries and classes) and subjective and inter-subjective demonstrations of the culture of silence. In addition, he proposes to break with the elitist vision of culture. Every single human being is a producer of culture and nothing justifies, in principle, the perception of artistic and religious demonstrations of the people as minor elements, beliefs or superstition. Miguel Arraes de Alencar, Mayor of Recife at the time of the foundation of the Popular Culture Movement, stated the following during the opening of the First National Literacy and Popular Culture Meeting in 1963: “As Mayor of Recife I have had the opportunity to start, together with people with all type of religious and political beliefs, a movement which will allow the people to adopt a new, different attitude to those of the closed-minded intellectuals, of the foreign students who study Brazil but not our reality, and of those that consider themselves owners of the people; a new attitude, one from which they can learn with the people what the doctors do not know: the science of suffering in life” [2]. The theatre of the oppressed by Augusto Boal, the popular music –being one of the strongest resistance areas against the military dictatorship– and the emergence of artists in other fields –for example, Abelardo da Hora and Francisco Brenan, in Recife – are part of this movement and that vision of culture.

This text by Paulo Freire links the theme of culture with that of development and modernisation. It assumes the hypothesis of the theory proposed in the same era by authors such as Enzo Falleto and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who published the book “Dependency and Development in Latin America” in Chile in 1967. According to this theory, the backwardness of Latin America was not due simply to a question of steps to be completed, but it had its roots in the international organisation of capitalism. The decades which followed the theory of the independence gave way to more complex interpretations of the globalisation of the market, which were also reflected in Paulo Freire’s work.‑

What remains, however, is his point of view, “that of the condemned on Earth, that of the excluded” [3]. In contrast to the market ethics, in his final writings Freire defends the universal human ethics which oppose the relativism of some postmodernist theories. He has a hope of universality, while at the same time, criticises exclusive universalism from a reductionist vision of modernity. It is something like the “macondian” which Orlando Fals Borda[4] referred to, that universal belief which takes the reference from what is on the edge, outside the system.

Finally, I note in this review, Paulo Freire’s reflection on modernisation, a topic of great relevance with regards to a pseudo technological determinism that replaced education with technical education in the 1970s; only with a new look and greater instrumental sophistication. Today, it’s not about the use of the programmed instruction, of learning machines (Skinner) and of projectors, but about computers, software and programs. The “salvation” of humanity –from the prolonging of life and the curing of diseases to the solution of environmental problems– is assigned to technological development. At no point does Paulo Freire oppose technology. His fight is not against technological advancement, but against the education that “rather than revealing reality, it mythicises it and consequently, domesticates and adapts it to man”. Technology can serve as much to unveil as to mythicise reality.

Everything that was said regards freedom or, as it came to be known during that period, liberation. Freedom is not a gift or something existing outside a person or society, but an achievement in the transformation of a society. It is necessary –as Freire said in the cited text– “to liberate cultural action”, which occurs in the movement in search of being more. His conclusion is that, “it is not possible to have cultural freedom whilst the culture of silence prevails in Latin America”. There were important advances in the right of free speech, as is evident in the inclusive public policies, in the level of literacy and in the emergence of the social movements (landless, indigenous peoples, the coloured population, gender, ecology, etc.). Not recognising this would be to demerit the efforts of the people who fought and suffered for these achievements; amongst those, Paulo Freire himself. However, the ancient cultures of silence still exist and new ones continue to be developed; creating the challenge that Paulo Freire proposes here, as part of his legacy: to admire the truth and action regarding it to overcome extreme situations.