conscientizacion y comunidad

7/24/2019 Conscientizacion y Comunidad

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Studies in Philosophy and Education 18: 389403, 1999.

2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 389

Conscientizacion y Comunidad: A DialecticalDescription of Education as the Struggle for

Freedom

EDUARDO MANUEL DUARTEHofstra University, 208 Mason Hall, Hempstead, NY 11549, U.S.A.

(E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. This paper contributes to those analyses that have discussed Hegels influence on Freire,

and Freires rethinking of Hegel. Yet, my narrative of the dialectic of conscientizacion, which Ipresent here, is a novel attempt to read both thinkers simultaneously. Thus, in this paper I am

exploring, and not didactically proving Gadottis (1994) important, yet unqualified, claim that

Hegels dialectic can be considered the principal theoretical framework of (Freires) Pedagogy of

the Oppressed. It could be said that the whole of his theory of conscientization has its roots in Hegel

(p. 74). And in this exploration, I am not demonstrating Freires expansion of Hegels dialectic

(Schutte, 1990), nor taking a position on whether or not the dialectic of Freires Pedagogy of the Op-

pressedsupersedes the Hegelian dialectic (Torres, 1976). Nor am I offering a comparison of the two

dialectics (Torres, 1994). (Of course, having made these claims, I am, as it were, taunting the reader

to deconstruct my piece.) My aim here is to immerse, or insert, myself into the Freirean/Hegelian

dialectic itself. I attempt to situate myself within that peculiar position of the dialectician who

braids ideas through synthetic textual analysis. I use a third person descriptive perspective that

incorporates the voices of Freire and Hegel, and, thereby, weave a new synthesized account of

the emergence of critical consciousness within the formal educational setting.

Key words:Freire, Hegel, submergence, alienation, being-for-another, master/slave dialectic, emer-

gence, dread, freedom, conversion, intervention, Conscientizacion

To be is to engage in relationships with others and with the world (Freire, 1997,

p. 3). With this statement, Paulo Freire begins what is perhaps his most succinctly

titled essay, Education as the Practice of Freedom. Taken together, the statement

and the title reveal Freires ontology of human freedom as the twin aspects ofbeing

andbecoming morehuman. Being human is to be with others, because the human

being is not simply in the world like some inanimate object, but with the world

and others, a subject creating history. This togetherness is hardly known to us, as

very few of us ever actually move beyond a mere acquaintance with each other andthe world, due, in part, to the hypertemporality that we now discover as defining

our experience. Nevertheless, for Freire,the quality of our existence is located in

the fact that we are relational beings, that we are and become more human insofar

as we can maintain relations with one another. Death, technically speaking, is our


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390 EDUARDO MANUEL DUARTE

withdrawal from the world we are in. When we are no longer in the world, our

departure signifies our demise. However, the Freirean ontology of freedom implies

that we cease to exist (mori) in our vocation as humans when we withdraw from

our relationships with others and the world. Aside from the hermit or the ascetic

whose concerns are, anyway, otherworldly, few would agree with the idea that

the human vocation is located outside our relations with others. This posture is

perhaps most illogical (impossible) for educators, for whom the meaning, if not

simply the time, of life is measured by the quality of the relationships we maintain.

For educators, how to construct meaningful togertherness is the proverbial riddle

wrapped up in an enigma.

Making (as in constructing, building, or producing) meaningful relationships

with others is the process through which we might define education as the practice

of freedom. But, what is meant by the practice of freedom? Does it mean habitual

or customary performance (e.g., wepracticefreedom and inclusion in this school)?

Or perhaps it signifies the process of learning through consistently repeated exer-

cises (e.g., come forward and form a circle children, its time we practice beingfree)? Or maybe it refers to a professional occupation (e.g., after many years of

liberating minds in the schools, Sofia has gone into private practice)? While it is

clear that in some ways all of these definitions could apply, my interest is not to

analyzead nauseamthe logical possibilities, but to focus on the sense in which the

practice of freedom involves collaborative work or production. It is precisely the

connotation of education as a process ofworking with others toward freedom that

takes me to the discussion I will offer in this paper.

My understanding of education as the collaborative struggle for freedom, has

emerged from my reading of Freires rewriting of G.W.F. Hegels phenom-

enology. My reading has focused, in particular, on Freires encounter with Hegels

dialectic of self-consciousness. (Chapter IV, sec. A, of Hegels Phenomenology ofSpirit.) In approaching this particular moment in Freires work, I was guided by

an important, yet unqualified, claim by Moacir Gadotti (a biographer of Freire)

that Hegels dialectic can be considered the principal theoretical framework of

[Freires] Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It could be said that the whole of his theory

of conscientization has its roots in Hegel(Gadotti, 1994, p. 74). Gadottis claim is

actually an endorsement of the conclusions reached by Carlos Alberto Torres: de

todas las influencia filosficos, el pensar hegeliano es el que est en las races de

la filosofa de la alfabetizacin problematizadora (y por ende en el mtodo, etc),

articulando toda el edificio filosfico, pero habiendo sido superado en la dialctica

de laPedagogia del Oprimido1 (Torres, 1976, p. 407).

This paper contributes to those analyses which have discussed Hegels influ-

ence on Freire, and Freires rethinking of Hegel. Yet, my narrative of the dialecticof conscientizacion, which I present in this paper, is a novel attempt to read

both thinkers simultaneously.2 Thus, in this paper I am not specifically interested

in exploring Gadotti claim, nor simply showing Freires expansionof Hegels

dialectic (Schutte, 1990), nor taking a position on whether or not the dialectic


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THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM 391

of Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed supersedes the Hegelian dialectic (Torres,

1976), and not offering a comparisonof the two dialectics (Torres, 1994). Rather,

my aim is to immerse or insert myself into the Freirean/Hegelian dialectic itself.

The voice I use in my paper is a third person descriptive perspective that incorpor-

ates the voices of Freire and Hegel. I weave a phenomenology of conscientiza-

cion using both Hegels and Freires dialectical descriptions. The discussion I offer

can perhaps be described as a philosophical mimesis, or mirroring, i.e., an attempt

to mirror the phenomenologies of Freire and Hegel. The result is a synthesized

account of the emergence of critical consciousness. This account culminates in the

depiction of education as an intersubjective struggle for freedom, as an ongoing

struggle between the clear perceptions of critical consciousness and historical

conditions of the world.

1st Moment:Submergence: Alienation, Being-for-Another

People, as being in a situation, find themselves rooted in temporal-spatial condi-

tions which mark them and which they also mark. They will tend to reflect on

their own situationality to the extent that they are challenged by it to act upon

it. Human beings are because they are in a situation. And they will be more the

more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically act upon it

(Freire,PO, p. 90). Here is a succinct summary of the dialectic of conscientizaction

as an ongoing process of becoming free. But how does this process get under way?

Where does it begin? What is the initial situation of consciousness?

The dialectic of conscientizacion, the struggle of the human being to be

and become free(r), begins in the state of unfreedom, where consciousness is

submergedby andobjectifiedwithin the processes of a deterministic and material-

istic lifeworld. Here, consciousness remains fixed in the world, its being renderedpermanent in the immediate form in which it appears as a being in nature, a

submergence in the expanse of life (Hegel, POS, p. 114). Without a life of its

own, consciousness is a dependent being, domesticated and reduced to mechanical,

functionalistic unthinking. In this state of submersion, consciousness is impotent

and incapable of independent action. This is the intransitive awareness stage,

where consciousness is caught in the flux of the world. Fatalistic, and an outsider

with regards to history, the individual lives from day to day satisfying their

basic needs (Mashayekh, 1974, p. 15). This fatalism defines life as determined and

closed. Consciousness in this moment is caught between the colorful show of the

sensuous here-and-now and the nightlike void of the supersensible beyond (Hegel,

POS, p. 111).In this first moment of the dialectic of conscientizacion, pedagogy is practiced

as banking education: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating

forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings . . . banking

method directly or indirectly reinforces [peoples] fatalistic perception of their

situation (Freire,PO, pp. 65, 66). This pedagogy serves to maintain consciousness


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submerged in thinghood, as a being not essentially for itself but for another, a

dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or be for another

(Hegel, POS, p. 115). Reduced to beings-for-another (manipulable objects) the

students are seen as containers or receptacles into which the teacher deposits

facts detached from any historical context.

As a mechanistic and deterministic environment, the banking class is ahistor-

ical. History is not present within this context as a living, evolving force, but

remains a pastout there, an event that hashappened. History is lifeless and petri-

fied, divorced from individuals who are themselves understood as isolated and

unattached to the world (Freire, PO, p. 62). Because it has already occurred, history

is registered as apermanence that molds the present, a superstructure: something

that is both beyond their grasp and, yet, determining their existence. Banking

method emphasizes permanence . . . a well behaved present, [and] a predeter-

mined future (Freire, PO, p. 65). Thus, critical consciousness is submerged

by a reality presented as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and

predictable (Freire,PO, p. 52).Power is the crux of this pedagogy. Banking education is structured upon

an asymmetric power relation which domesticates the students. In the banking

classroom the critical capacities of the students are alienated from them as the

teacher appropriates their processes of inquiry. The teacher knows everything and

the students know nothing (Freire, PO, p. 54).3 The students, reduced to the status

of receptacle, equate learning with passive reception. The students are not called

upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated by the teacher (Freire, PO,

p. 61). A strict hierarchical power relationship allows the instructor to completely

dominate the process: the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while

the pupils are mere objects (Freire, PO, p. 54). This domination or power of the

teacher over the students, maintains the two in opposition, although the students areunaware of this opposition as a the site of potential conflict. Their ignorance, the

essence of the submergence of critical consciousness, is the chain which holds them

in bondage (Hegel, POS, p. 115). Submerged in reality [they] cannot perceive

clearly the order that serves the interests of [the teacher] (Freire, PO, p. 44).

True, they perceive the teacher as otherthan them, but their perception is not yet an

awareness of their alienation. They remain vicarious beings who have the illusion

of acting though the action of the teacher (Freire, PO, p. 54).

This first moment of the dialectic produces a pedagogy without an acknowl-

edgedconflict or struggle. The banking pedagogy seeks to instill credulity and

manageability. The relationship is thus one between unequals who exist as two

opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the independent consciousness whose

essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whoseessential nature is simply to live or to be for another (Hegel, POS, p. 115). Within

this context, the students do not practice any act of cognition, since the object

towards which that act should be directed is the propertyof the teacher rather than


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a medium evoking critical reflection of both teacher and students (Freire, PO,

p. 61, emphasis mine).

In sum, the banking pedagogy alienates, and dehumanizes insofar as it reduces

the individual to a manipulable object: to alienate human beings from their own

decision-making is to change them into objects (Freire, PO, p. 66). This pedagogy

serves to domesticate the consciousness of students, and to the extent that they

understand their condition, they will recognize that they do not possess an inde-

pendent consciousness, but a dependent one; they are not certain ofbeing-for-self

as the truth of [them]self. On the contrary, [their] truth is in reality the unessential

consciousness and its unessential action (Hegel,POS, p. 115). Moreover, because

this pedagogy actively submerges the critical capacities of the student, it is, in

essence, an act of violence. Any situation in which some individuals prevent

others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence (Freire, PO,

p. 66). This asymmetrical relationship is based on a recognition that is one-

sided and unequal (Hegel, 1977, p. 114) with the teacher alone understanding

consequences of submergence and choosing to maintain it. As a result, neither sideof the relationship knows the freedom of critical consciousness.

2nd Moment:Emergence: Recognizing and Confronting the Fear of

Freedom, Risking Life

In the first moment, where consciousness is submerged, the teacher in Freires

phenomenology, like the master in Hegels, chooses to hold the student in the

bondage of ignorance and to be the power over this thing s/he has created (Hegel,

POS, p. 115). Thus, the teacher chooses and enforces their choice, and the students

comply (Freire, PO, p. 54). But in making this choice, the teacher has chosen

to create conditions of alienation in which they too must exist. The teacher, inchoosing to create this context of unfreedom, put [them]self into relation with . . . a

thing as such . . . to the consciousness for which thinghood is the essential character-

istic (Hegel,POS, p. 115). Thus, the teacher, despite the power possessed, is also

unfree insofar as s/he is living like those whom s/he has reduced to object-status:

the teacher has submerged her/his own capacity for critical consciousness and does

not experience the freedom of self-consciousness. S/he is not a being-for-self, but a

being-for-another insofar as her/his labor is exhausted in the act of controlling the

students. Herein lies the contradiction within the banking educational context: all

end-up living as things, as object-beings, submerged within reality, [and] cannot

relate to it; they are creatures of mere contacts . . . onlyin the world (Freire, 1997,

p. 3).The educator as dominator is not free.

The realization by the teacher that s/he has created and therefore lives within a

contradiction, that lordship has in reality turned out to be something quite different

from an independent consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 117) moves the dialectic

of conscientizacion. The recognition of this contradiction by the banking-clerk


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educator, namely, that s/he has created a context of unfreedom, and has therefore

chosen to be unfree, initiates the next moment in the dialectic: the emergence of

conscientizacion. This insight motivates the educator to negate the contradiction

through a commitment to transform the context they have enforced. This commit-

ment to create conditions of freedom signifies the emergence of the educators, and,

in turn, the students conscientizacion: just as lordship showed that its essential

nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too servitude in its consummation

will really turn into the opposite of what it immediately is; as a consciousness

forced back into itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed into truly

independent consciousness (Hegel,POS, p. 117).

Without this conversion by the teacher, the consciousnesses of the educator

and students remain submerged. Why is this? Why must the teacher initiate the

transformation of the power dynamic and shift the landscape so as to create a

space for the emergence of conscientizacion? Because the students, as receptacles,

will remain captive until the educator is awakened and moved to dramatically alter

the power relationship. Thus, it is necessary for the teacher who has perceivedthe contradiction of their banking pedagogy to initiate the process to resolve

the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescriber,

domesticator, for the role of student among students and thereby to undermine

the power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation (Freire, PO, p. 56).

Thus, the teachers conversion to the students, this growing awareness that s/he

has created a context where none are free, will produce an important moment

in the dialectic: the slow and confounding negation of the educator as dominator.

Of course, this negation is not tantamount to the act of liberating the students. On

the contrary, it is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their

oppressors (Freire, PO, p. 38). It is they (the students) who must, from their

stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for fuller humanity; the oppressor,who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others, is unable to lead

this struggle (Freire,PO, p. 29). Hence, while the educators conversion initiates

the necessary shift in the paradigm of power, this movement is not, in-itself, the

moment of liberation. The emergence of conscientizacion is not to be confused

with conscientizacion itself. The negation of the banking educational context

and the presence (role) of the educator as dominator is fulfilled by the students

whose liberation or freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift (Freire, PO,

p. 29). Besides, the conversion of the teacher is not an immediate transformation

willed by a decision. On the contrary, conversion is a gradual movement from one

pole of the contradiction to the other, and a discovery of her/himself to be an

oppressor may cause considerable anguish. In turn, this stage in the emergenceof

conscientizacion is like a childbirth, and a painful one (Freire, PO, p. 31).The negation of the dominator is a slow death/birth which creates, at first,

chaos and uncertainty, rather than certainty and purposeful action. The awakening

of the educators consciousness which initiates the negation of the conditions of

unfreedom, unsettles the dynamic to the extent that a momentary vacuum or void


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is created. The educators abdication of power and attempt to join the students

creates panic and fear; neither side understanding who or what will fill the void

that has emerged. Both have been conditioned to act as subject and objects,

and neither fully understands the potential of the new roles they have before them.

The vacuum created by the teachers conversion is a void signifying the rupture of

the bond between teacher and student. This rupturing sets the students apart from

the teacher, who must now re-enter the relationship as a student. This new position

or role is the necessary outcome of the insight which initiated the conversion. With

the rupture, however, all are now confronted with the contradiction, the truth of the

contradiction that s/he had created the conditions of her/his own bondage.

The teachers conversion is a life-and-death struggle (Hegel, POS, p. 114) in

which the educator slowly eradicates the position of dominator. From this trial

by death, the educator emerges anew in solidarity with the students fighting at

their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these beings

for another (Freire, PO, p. 31). The educators radical gesture, or conversion,

requires that s/he enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary(Freire, PO, p. 31). With the relationship now reconfigured, the teacher will be

recoupled with the students in a struggle for freedom/humanity that is lead by

them but fought together. And here is initiated the pedagogy which represents

a collective struggle for freedom. From the outset, her 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 trust in people and

their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their

relations with them (Freire, PO, p. 56).

The birth of the new relationship is, first and foremost, experienced as the

slow, painful death of the old. The death of the authoritarian presence does not

immediately produce a context of freedom, but a context of chaos and uncertainty.The rupturing of the asymmetrical relationship represents the absolute melting-

away of everything stable (Hegel, POS, p. 117). The educators enlistment to

the ranks of the students signifies the dissolution of the educator as dominator.

In the face of the death of the old order the students are seized with dread. This

fear manifests as an internal conflict. In this moment of confusion the conscious-

ness of the students is bifurcated and split, suffering 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 freedom, they fear it

(Freire,PO, p. 30). The split represents the legacy of the dominator (unfreedom)

as a slowly dying presence that has yet to be buried or located outsidethe students

consciousness. They havent yet understood the condition of unfreedom as an

antagonistic reality that must constantly be perceived, confronted and transformed.At this moment of emergence, the oppressor is housed within the people, and

their resulting ambiguity makes them fearful of freedom (Freire,PO, p. 144). The

original paradigm of unfreedom has not yet been completely negated, as the legacy


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of the teachers domination over the students lives on as an internal conflictwithin

the students partially submerged and emerging consciousness:

The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being

divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; betweenhuman solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having

choices, between being spectators and being 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 re-create, in their

power to transform the world. (Freire,PO, p. 30)

The internal conflict will ultimately give way to the dialectic of conscientizac-

tion as an ongoing struggle between the clear perceptions of critical consciousness

and historical conditions of the world. However, in these moments of conscientiza-

cions emergence the students remain partially submerged in the orderthat serves

the interests of those who benefit from their ignorance, within the contradiction

in which the banking education seeks to maintain them (Freire, PO, p. 56). The

emergence of conscientizacion is a slow and painful death/birth.

The dialectic of conscientizacion is moved by the dread that the emerging order

causes. The dread represents the fear of being free. Yet the fear of freedom compels

the negation or transformation of the given [alienation], starting from an idea or

and ideal [freedom] that does not yet exist, that is still nothingness (a project)

(Kojve, 1969, p. 48). The potential of independent critical/self-consciousness

produces a fear or anxiety. But this doubt and fear, precisely as first moments in

the emergence of conscientizacion, are overcome by the lureof freedom itself. The

vaguely perceived ideal of freedom entices consciousness, tempts it with the hope

of reward or pleasure to be attained with independence. The fear of freedom is

at once dread and awe. Hope in the promise of independence produces awe, an

overwhelmingfeeling of reverence for freedom which is perceived as sublime. Asdread, the fear of freedom is the intuition of nothingness as the failed project of

self-affirmation and the resubmergence of consciousness. This dread is the spectre

of alienation that haunts consciousness. Fear of freedom, of which its possessor

is not necessarily aware, makes him see ghosts (Freire, PO, p. 18). Thus, dread,

like hope, moves consciousness to action. Dread motivates a negation of alienation

as a present reality and future possibility. The hope or promise of this ideal, the

attainment of freedom, in turn, compels life risking action which represents the

final moment in the death of the old and the birth of the new. It is solely by risking

life that freedom is obtained . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life

may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth

of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 114).This risk is a crucial moment in the dialectic, because it is here that alienated

(oppressed) consciousness becomes awarethat its dread is its own internalization

of the oppressors necrophilic view of the world (Freire,PO, p. 41). This realization

is a negation of the fear of freedom as the inability to function beyond the status of

object, or being-for-another. Thus the moment of emergence is recognized as a


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double bind.4 The students realize they are stuck or trapped by the duality which

has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom

they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic freedom, they

fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose

consciousness they have internalized (Freire,PO, p. 30). In turn, they realize that

overcoming the double bind involves negating the internalized dominators love

of death, not of life. This realization is at once the confirmation of the desire for

life itself, the recognition that life itself is the object of desire in freedom. The

oppressed, who have been shaped by the death-affirming climate of oppression,

must find through their struggle the way of to life affirming humanization . . .

(Freire,PO, p. 50). This realization is the moment of the birth of conscientizacion

and the Subject. [Desire] and action, then, conspire to reveal the subject itself as a

living being (Lauer, 1987, p. 94). The realization is thus a negation/confirmation:

a negation of the dread (fear of the death of self, alienation), and confirmation of

the awe of freedom.

The dread of unfreedom (the resubmergence of consciousness), gives wayto the awe of freedom as the possibility of life. In this moment the percep-

tion of possibility produces the insight toward human experience as historical, as

being-in-history. Herein lies the initial insight concerning the historicity of human

experience. Perceiving life as a becoming, critical consciousness understands life

as not simply being alive but confirms that existence is historical (Freire, PO,

p. 79).

In sum, the emergence of critical consciousness involves a process of self-

transformation through which the fear of freedom is overcome. This transformation

of self represents the resolution of the internalized contradiction or conflict between

a whole/unified and divided self. Only as they discover themselves to be hosts

of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy(Freire,PO, p. 30). By overcoming itself as a divided and inauthentic being, the

emerging consciousness begins the process of understanding itselfas a subject of

history. This process of transformation is thus the first moment in the reconfigured

educational context, or the beginning of the new pedagogy which will focus on the

historicity of the human condition. Here is seen the beginning of the two essential

sides of education: the investigation of thinking itself and the deepening of histor-

ical awareness. Hence, the self-transformation is the process of coming to know

what knowing is, and by knowing what knowing is the person comes to know what

it is to be a subject in the world, a knowing which begins when consciousness

posits itself rather than an alien object as the object of its knowing (Lauer, 1987,

p. 92). Positing itself as the object of its knowing, consciousness (Bewusstsein)

initiates the process by which self (Selbst) returns from otherness (alienation). Inthis process of returning, whereby self is negated as other (object), the orginary

motivating desire (Begierde) of dread is transformed/transcended (aufgehoben) and

gives way to the awe of possibility or potential of freedom in historical subjectivity.

The fear of freedom is overcome through the risking of life, not in the sense of


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gambling with life, but as risking the challenge of life as an ongoing struggle for

freedom, and as an ongoing struggle to critically unveil and transform the world

self is situated in. By embracing the project of freedom the subject risks life, and

overcomes the anxiety of the future as a failed project, an anxiety which is itself

a product of a dissolution of the old order. In this act of negation consciousness

supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what is superseded, and

consequently survives its own supersession. In this experience, self-consciousness

learns that life is as essential to it as pure self-consciousness (Hegel, POS, p. 115).

3rd Moment:Intervention: Consientizacion, Education as Making History,

Making Culture, as Humanization

The students have now emerged from the ahistorical conditions in which they

existed submerged in a world to which they [could] give no meaning, lacking

a tomorrow and a today because they exist[ed] in an overwhelming present

. . . (Freire, PO, p. 79). They now posit themselves as Subjects of history (the

subjectivity of history, the makers of history). The emergence of conscientizacion

is the awareness of self as a historical being in a situation. This dialectic between

self and situation is the historical condition which defines the ontology of human

experience or human freedom as the twin aspects ofbeing and becoming more

human. Human beings are because they are in a situation. And they will 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 (Freire, PO, p. 90). This reflection is not contemplation but praxis, an

action-oriented inquiry. Conscientizacion, or reflection upon situationality, is an

analytic-creative act of inquiry. Humankind 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 conscientizacion of the situation. Conscientizacion is the deep-

ening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence (Freire, PO,

p. 90).

The emergence of critical consciousness signifies the resolution of the original

teacher/student contradiction. The transformation of the relationship marked the

dissolution of the old roles and the emergence of a new person: neither oppressor

or oppressed, but [the person] in the process of liberation . . . the humanist, revolu-

tionary educator (Freire, PO, p. 38). Education, properly speaking, now comes

on the scene through the reconciliation of the poles of the contradiction so that

both are simultaneously teachers andstudents (Freire,PO, p. 53). Thus, the emer-gence of conscientizacion, the emergence of these new roles and new persons,

immediately announces the birth of a new pedagogy: problem posing education.

The education flowing from conscientizacion is historical. The banking educa-

tional context was a mechanistic, deterministic environment, and ahistorical.

History was not present as a living, evolving force, but remained a past out there,


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an event that has happened. While the banking classroom presented history as

lifeless and petrified, in problem posing pedagogy history is the sum total of

human aspirations, motives and objectives . . . [which] do not exist out there

somewhere, as static entities; they are occurring (Freire, PO, p. 88). The temporal-

spatial conditions of problem posing pedagogy are defined as processural, evolving

and unfolding. The incompletion of the human being defines education as the

continuous labor which brings into the world this new being: . . . human in the

process of achieving freedom (Freire,PO, p. 31).

Problem posing education is an ongoing process, a permanent struggle,

constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it mustbecome (Freire,PO, p. 65).

Education as the practice of freedom is the ongoing, emergence of a new person.

Conscientizacion is a dialectical telos (end) or a final moment that is defined as

anongoing event.Conscientizacion defines education as the continuous making of

history, as the event through which human beings not only critically reflect upon

their existence but critically act upon it (Freire, PO, p. 90). With conscientizacion,

human beings are aware of their incompletion, that they are unfinished, uncom-pleted being in and with a likewise unfinished reality (Freire, PO, p. 65). Thus,

to say that problem posing education is historical is to recognize that the students-

educators have entered a pedagogical context in which they confirm themselves as

free.

If problem posing education is the labor through which the human being is

constantly emerging, conscientizacion is that ever growing awareness and under-

standing of this emergence. Conscientizacion gauges and guides the process by

which the situation is unveiled and transformed. Humankind emerge from their

submersion and acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled. Inter-

vention in reality historical awareness itself thus represents a step forward

from emergence, and results from the conscientizacion of the situation (Freire,PO, p. 90). Through their intervention, the students-educators in problem posing

education apprehend [their] situation as an historical reality susceptible of trans-

formation (Freire, PO, p. 66). Thus their workis first and foremost a struggle to

transform the conditions they discover themselves in. However, they immediately

recognize that the process of intervention is already underway. This is identified

in the discovery that their laborto emerge from the alienated banking context was

the first intervention, the first moment in which they seized control of their destiny

and created history. Reflecting on this intervention, they recall the negation of the

dread, and recognize that in work desire [was] held in check, fleetingness staved

off (Hegel,POS, p. 118). The negation of dread, of alienation, and the struggle to

transform the world is now perceived as the Action(Tat) of Fighting and of Work

(Kampf und Arbeit). Work [will] open the way to Freedom or more exactly to liberation (Kojve, 1969, p. 48). As subjects inserted in history and no longer

caught in the flux of the world, the students-educators are neither fatalistic nor

resigned, but fully engaged in the process of directing the movement of their exist-

ence with one another. Resignation gives way to the drive for transformation and


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inquiry, over which people feel themselves to be in control. If people, as historical

beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not

control that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity (Freire,

PO, p. 66).

The pedagogy of intervention is thus investigation and transformation of the

given reality (sociopolitical situation), or education as the creation of history.

Making history, however, is synonymous with humanizing the world. This

pedagogy is thus co-intentional education, or the collaboration of students-

educators, as Subjects, to unveil the world as an historical context rather than

a static, closed, mechanistic universe. As they attain this knowledge of reality

through common reflection and action, they discovers themselves as its permanent

re-creators (Freire,PO, p. 51). Hence, the pedagogy of intervention is a complete

inversion of the banking concept of education insofar as students-educators now

perceive life as the result of their own work. It is in this way, therefore, that

consciousness qua worker, comes to see in the independent being [of the object]

itsown independence (Hegel, POS, p. 118). Education, as the praxis of freedom,is the ongoing struggle to be and become more human. Problem posing educa-

tion affirms men and women as beings in the process ofbecoming (Freire, PO,

p. 65). Education as thepraxisof freedom is the making, construction, or building

of the world as a more humane (compassionate) reality. Thus, when positing that

education in order to be, it mustbecome (Freire,PO, p. 65) one is claiming that

educationqua intervention (guided by conscientizacion) is the process of human-

ization. Education as the praxis of freedom is cultural action. Students-educators

are now identified as cultural workers in the sense that their labor, or what they

create (culture), is the sign of their independence or freedom. Through this work

they see themselves and thereby become for [themselves] something existing on

[their] own account (Hegel, POS, p. 118).

Conclusion: Freedom with Others, Education as Co-Intentionality

The education issuing from conscientizacion is co-intentional: the teachers and

students 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 attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection

and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators (Freire, PO,

p. 51).

By describing intervention pedagogy asco-intentional Freire is using the philo-sophic language of Edmund Husserl in a particular, if not peculiar, manner. Freires

unique use of Husserl (the architect of phenomenology) is both an avenue for

further exploration, and an issue that allows me reiterate the most important impli-

cation of the dialectical description offered above; namely, the teachers choice to

beand becomefree(r).


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Intentionality, or the phenomenological process by which the knower simultan-

eously discovers and creates the world, was described by Husserl in Cartesian

tones. Intentionality is, first and foremost, the experience of a singular ego. For

example, when describing human experience Husserl demonstrates performatively

what he (I) knows about others: Experiencing them as men, I understand and

take them as Ego-subjects, units like myself, related to their natural surroundings

(Husserl, 1969, p. 105). For Husserl, of course, each individual experiences distinct

and different fields of perception due, in no small part, to the unique memories

each of us holds. Husserl adds that despite the uniqueness of our own ego-subject

experience, we come to understandings with our neighbors, and set up in common

an objective spatio-temporal fact-world as the world about us that is there for us

all, and to which we ourselves none the less belong (Husserl, 1969, p. 105). Does

Freires category of co-intentionality correspond to Husserls qualification of the

ego-subjects intentionality? Is setting up a common world what co-intentionality

is all about? How, if at all, does Freires phenomenology diverge from Husserl, and

what are the consequences of this new direction in phenomenology?At first glance, it would appear that Freires co-intentionality is a consistent

application of Husserl. When Freire defines conscientizacion as peoples awareness

of their situationality, their understanding that they are rooted in temporal-spatial

conditions which mark them and which they also mark (Freire,PO, p. 90), his use

of Husserls phenomenological language is unmistakable. In turn, his connection

with Husserl seems even clearer when Freire defines co-intentionality as peoples

knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, [by which] they

discover themselves as its permanent re-creators (Freire,PO, p. 51).

However, the connection between Freire and Husserl starts to loosen when co-

intentionality is considered in light of the Hegelian inspired dialectic of conscien-

tizacion. In Husserl, the ego-subject both alone and with others knows/sets-upthe world. In Husserl, this common world we set up with our neighbors unfolds,

so to speak, casually and naturally. The creation of a common world is an event

of almost secondary purpose. In Freire, on the other hand, the act of creating the

common world is the expression and experience of our existential freedom, and the

individual emerges in-and-through this collaborative act of unveiling and trans-

forming the world. Thus, the pursuit of full humanity, . . . , cannot be carried out

in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity . . . Attempting

to be more human, individualistically, leads to having more egotistically, a form of

dehumanization (Freire, PO, pp. 6667). Hence, Husserls inter-ego-subjectivity

is supplanted by Freires category of co-intentionality, a description of inter-

subjectivity which is inspired by the Hegelian dialectic. The affirmation of life

which is essential to self-consciousness cannot be the affirmation of ones ownlife alone, because unlike the Husserlian phenomenology of intersubjectivity

which first discovers the self and then seeks to constitute a world of other selves,

the Hegelian phenomenology finds that other selves are essential to the discovery

of ones own self and that this discovery is actually a producing of oneself in


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relation to others (Lauer, 1976, pp. 99, 101). In light of Lauers statement, I

would claim that Freire extended the phenomenology of intersubjectivity through

an ontology of human freedom which insists that beingand becoming morehuman

occurs always and everywhere with others, because, as I stated at the outset, for

Freire the human being is not simply in the world like some inanimate object, but

with the world and others, an intersubject creating history. As Freire writes, the

intersubjective praxis of freedom is a liberation of women and men, not things.

Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he

liberated by others (Freire,PO, p. 48).

While the connections and disconnections between Freire and Husserl requires

further exploration, the established divergence between the two allows me to

underline what I understand to be the most pivotal moment in the dialectic

of conscientizacion, namely, the educators conversion to the students and their

commitment to the liberatory process. It seems evident that the key moment in

the shift toward a pedagogy of intervention is that moment where the educator

recognizes that his/her freedom is dependent upon the freedom of his/her students,when s/he comes to the realization that the production of her/his freedom (self-

actualization) is a joint project s/he works on together with her/his students. Freire,

using the words of Ernesto Che Guevara, calls this moment a communion with

the people. Above, the moment was described as a conversion, and as a life-risking

action. Here, I emphasize that the educators conversion, their communion with

the students, follows from an existentialist choice to disrupt the hierarchical power

arrangements in the name of freedom and possibility. It follows from the under-

standing to accept, as Sartre did, that I can take freedom as my goal only if I take

that of others as a goal as well . . . Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for

everyone else. In choosing myself, I choose [humankind] (Sartre, 1970, p. 37).

Notes

1 Of all the philosophical influences, the Hegelian thought is that which is at the roots of problem-

posing literacy (as a method, etc.); articulating the entire philosophical structure, yet superceded in

the dialectic ofPedagogy of the Oppressed.2 Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressedand Hegels Phenomenology of Spiritare abbreviated (PO)

and (POS) in parenthetical references.3 Freire is clear about his connection with Hegel on this point: The students, alienated like the slave

in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teachers existence . . . (Freire,PO,

p. 53).4 I am indebted to Reiner Schrmann for this term. Schrmann describes the phrase double bind

as a primary injunction declaring the law; a secondary injunction declaring a counter-law, hence

conflicting with the first; and lastly a tertiary injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping from

the field constituted by the first two injunctions (Schrmann, 1991, p. 234). This term, according

to Schrmann was first coined by the social psychologist Gregory Bateson. I am using the phrase to

denote the insight that consciousness hasaboutthe duality signifying the need and fear of freedom.

This stage of the dialectic can be described as adouble bindbecause consciousness is trapped, and

not yet able to experience the freedom of critical consciousness.


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