Has anyone here read it? I’m listening to the audiobook and it’s kind of interesting, and I’ve picked out a few things (at least I know a tiny bit about Hegel, Fanon, Sarte, and Bergson), but why is it so jargon-y and confusing? Is there anything else I should have read first? I feel like all I’m getting out of it is what I already know from ‘Oppose book worship’ by Mao, or the bit of ‘wretched of the earth’ by fanon that I remember. What are your thoughts on the book?

  • Muad'DibberA
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    61 year ago

    Gotta admit, this was one of the first supposedly socialists books that I read, that made me realize, that only a very tiny minority of people who call themselves socialists actually read things.

    I also found the book jargony, idealist, leaned heavily on terminology, and didn’t have much of value to say once you look past the terms. A lot of modern day champaigne socialist scholarship like this, mark fisher’s capitalist realism, zizek, is just 2nd-hand gramsci that focuses on media, art analysis, education, and directs people’s focus away from the actually important topics: imperialism, materialist analysis, how most of the worlds proletarians eat, drink, and live.

    This is why at the public level, the “acceptable socialists”, are these champaigne / idealist socialists that appeal to college audiences, and direct people’s attention to Hegel, Lacan, french theory, and away from surplus value, poverty, production, and imperialism.

    • QueerCommieOP
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      1 year ago

      The book’s certainly not worthless, but for someone advocating for the language of the people and duologue with the people he certainly uses a lot of language that wouldn’t be understandable to the vast majority of the masses. “Trust me bro, I totally have to use the word Conscientizacao”

  • ⚧️TheConquestOfBed♀️
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    51 year ago

    The whole book can be handily summarized by this section:

    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; for in thinking about the people in order to liberate (rather than dominate) them, the leaders give of themselves to the thinking of the people. One is the thinking of the master; the other is the thinking of the comrade.

    Domination, by its very nature, requires only a dominant pole and a dominated pole in antithetical contradiction; revolutionary liberation, which attempts to resolve this contradiction, 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 about the people, as 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 human beings in communion liberate each other. This affirmation is not meant to undervalue the importance of revolutionary leaders but, on the contrary, to emphasize their value. What could be more important 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’être but a motive for rejoicing. By their very nature, revolutionary leaders can do what the dominant elites—by their very nature—are unable to do in authentic terms.

    The rest of the book essentially exists as a way to justify this and give a general idea of how to accomplish it. Libs like it because they think it’s metaphorical, and will apply this sort of rhetoric to running private schools for rich kids. But when he starts talking about fascism you see that he’s referring to actual revolutionaries working against a fascist death of the world.

  • @freagle
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    41 year ago

    The Red Menace podcast did a decent enough discussion on the text that you might find helpful.

    • QueerCommieOP
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      31 year ago

      Thanks, I might get more out of that than the actual book.

      • @freagle
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        31 year ago

        Oh no, definitely read the book. It is an incredible study of a particular method of propaganda as praxis, specifically co-active pedagogy. If you have no experience in education from the perspective of delivering training, it might be a little too inaccessible at this point in your journey. But if so, I would schedule time to come back to the work in 5 years and it might be a completely different experience for you.

        • QueerCommieOP
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          1 year ago

          I’m still reading it, I just hope the podcast will help me understand it. I’ll also read it again eventually, with a better capacity to understand it.

  • @Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    This was a great read imo and a spectacular feat in pedagogical studies. Donaldo Macedo answers your question in the introduction:

    The assumption that Freire […] enagage[s] in a “tunnel-vision style of … writing” is not only false: it also points to a distorted notion that there is an a priori agreed-upon style of writing that is monolithic, available to all, and “free of jargon.” This blind and facile call for writing clarity represents a pernicious mechanism used by academic liberals who suffocate discourses different from their own. Such a call often ignores how language is being used to make social inequality invisible. It also assumes that the only way to deconstruct ideologies of oppression is through a disccurse that involves what these academics characterize as a langauge of clarity.

    [D]uring a discussion we had about this, [a colleague] asked me, a bit irritably, “Why do you and Paulo insist on using Marxist jargon? Many readers who may enjoy reading Paulo may be put off by the jargon.” […] I reminded her that Freire’s language was the only means through which he could have done justice to the complexity of the various concepts dealing with oppression. For one thing, I reminded her, “Imagine that instead of writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freire had written “Pedagogy of the Disenfranchised.” The first title utilizes a discourse that names the oppressor, whereas the second fails to do so. […] “Pedagogy of the Disenfranchised” dislodges the agent of the action while leaving in doubt who bears the responsibility for such action. This leaves the ground wide open for blaming the victim of disenfranchisement for his or her own disenfranchisement.

    Edit: I recommend you read the book in written form because it’s not an easy, casual read. You will have to read, scrutinize, analyze and reread just to get an idea of what Freire is talking about. Granted, it is 100 percent worth it.