Paulo Freire: on hope.

In one of his last books, Paulo Freire tells this story:

   Once, in a TV report about landless
   rural workers in the interior
   of San Paulo, the reporter asked a
   country adolescent, "Do you
   usually dream?" "No, I only have
   nightmares," he replied. What
   was fundamental in his answer
   was his fatalist, immobilist
   understanding. The bitterness of
   that adolescent's existence was so
   profound that his presence in the
   world had become a nightmare,
   an experience in which it was
   impossible to dream. (1)

For hundreds of millions of people, the condition of their lives is such that they may view their existence like this Brazilian teenager, as a living nightmare, with no possibility of a dream. This fatalism and rejection of hope reflects a material reality of poverty and exploitation that those of us in the privileged West or the privileged elites throughout the world--the first world in the third world, to paraphrase Freire--can barely imagine. But those of us who are privileged have our own fatalisms, grounded in our sense of powerlessness, of being out-of-control, of living in the heart of what seems increasingly a brutal and militarized Empire. What hope do we have of countering and resisting the power of the amoral and profoundly anti-democratic elites who control our government, our lives, and who shape the parameters of possibility for the lives of all the people of the earth?

Consider some other teenagers, these described by Arundhati Roy in a column published during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in April, 2003, in the British newspaper The Guardian:

   On the steel torsos of their missiles,
   adolescent American soldiers
   scrawl colorful messages in childish
   handwriting: For Saddam, from
   the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes
   down. A marketplace. A home. A
   girl who loves a boy. A child who
   only ever wanted to play with his
   brother's marbles. On March 21,
   the day after American and British
   troops began their illegal invasion
   and occupation of Iraq, an
   "embedded" CNN correspondent
   interviewed an American soldier.
   "I wanna get in there and get my
   nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I
   wanna take revenge for 9/11." To
   be fair to the correspondent ... he
   did sort of weakly suggest that so
   far there was no real evidence that
   linked the Iraqi government
   to the September 11
   attacks ... "Yeah, well that stuff's
   way over my head," [Private AJ]
   replied. (2)

This teenager does not awake with nightmares (or at least not that we know) but he does not have a dream of hope either. Instead, state-sponsored ignorance leaves teenaged soldiers like this immersed in a daydream of false hopes of revenge, marked by their dismissal of the possibility of a critical reading of the world, of the stuff that's "way over [their] heads." In his extraordinary speech, "We Stand Passively Mute," delivered on the floor of the US Senate in early February of this year, Senator Robert Byrd said, "To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is 'in the highest moral traditions of our country.'" "In our actions and words," said Byrd, "We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.'" (3)

Nightmares, fantasies, sleepwalking. Where can we look for a positive dream of a more just world? Where is that source of hope? In her discussion of the explosion of anti-American feeling throughout the world, Arundhati Roy cautions against conflating a government and its people. She notes the extraordinary demonstrations by Americans against the actions of our government. These echo the anti-war demonstrations throughout the world. Here in the United States and in many other countries, the peace movements are led by groups also active in anti-corporate globalization movements and movements for more specific issues such as trafficking in women, the destruction of the environment, the massive human costs of such agreements as NAFTA and GATT on specific communities. These global movements are activated by a hope that a more just world can come into being. For the past three decades, teachers, literacy workers, and those who believe in the possibility of critical teaching and learning have found a similar source of hope in the work of Paulo Freire. What can Paulo Freire contribute to our understanding of the possibilities of hope in this extreme historical moment?

Since the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed over thirty years ago, Paulo Freire has been an inspiration to progressive educators seeking ways to use education to build more just societies in settings throughout the world. Freire's compassion and eloquence speak powerfully to all those seeking social justice and have led many educators to claim Freire as their own. Freire stood firmly with the oppressed, and the consistency of his vision has made him a symbol of resistance to oppression. To the very end of his life, Freire continued to condemn forces of exploitation and dehumanization. While acknowledging his limitations, I believe we can look to Freire as an example of what it means to be an engaged educator seeking peace and justice in a militarized and deeply unjust world.

A large part of Freire's appeal lies in his eloquence and steadfast denunciation of injustice. But another is the simplicity of the initial vision of the world that he expressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: there are two positions, oppressor and oppressed; both are examples of dehumanization, but only the oppressed can lead the struggle for true humanization, because they are the ones who truly understand "the terrible significance of an oppressive society." (4) For Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, true humanization is marked by freedom, autonomy, and responsibility. Following existentialist thinkers like Erich Fromm, Freire sees freedom as "the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion." (5) If Freire had remained at this level of idealism, he would have remained an academic philosopher framing the world in binary abstractions. It is Freire's next step that makes his work so influential. For Freire, the oppressed must see that the limitations of their freedom are not inevitable, but are the result of actions taken to construct and maintain an unjust world. But this perception of an unjust world which is not fated, but which has come about because of historical struggle, is also not enough. It must lead to action, to praxis, the struggle to transform that violent world.

For Freire violence is a key concept. For him, violence refers not only to the kind of violence with which we now are all too familiar--the missiles, bombs, deaths and maiming of civilians and teen-aged soldiers--but also the violence of the status-quo, of an unjust society which distorts and limits the possibility of full humanity to masses of people--people who are not even seen as human by those in power. For the oppressors, "any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression." (6) They are accustomed to seeing only themselves as humans; others are simply things, to be exploited or possessed. As Freire put it:

   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 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.... (7)

Through their control of the state and the media, through the sheer magnitude of their wealth and willingness to use violence to maintain it, elites have been able to define and control the world. Their vision comes to permeate the consciousness of all. This is why Freire insists that action alone will not suffice. Until the oppressed develop new conceptions of what humane relationships can be, they will be faced by the constant danger that they will simply replicate the world they are seeking to transform. Thus praxis, the dialectic of reflection and action, is the source of hope, grounded in Freire's unswerving conviction of the human capacity for love and thirst for justice.

   Nor yet can dialogue exist without
   hope. Hope is rooted in
   men's incompletion, from which
   they move out in constant
   search--a search which can be
   carried out only in communion
   with others. Hopelessness is a
   form of silence, of denying the
   world and fleeing from it. (8)

The hope that marks Pedagogy of the Oppressed reflects the moment of revolution and sense of radical possibility of the late 1960s. This confidence and certainty can be seen in the binary quality of Freire's thinking, his comfort with the position of the leader who calls for revolutionary action, his failure to address the complexity of overlapping and contradictory positions in which the positions of oppressor and oppressed are shifting and ambiguous. For Freire, as for other left critics of this period, this revolutionary hero is imagined as male and as existing solely in the public world, a vision which discounts and yet at the same time rests on the world of personal relationships or of everyday life--the world of women. (9) Freire's work has been challenged by feminists and postmodernists, who call into question his unexamined assumption of male privilege and his modernist faith in rationality and historical metanarratives.

In his later work, Freire moved to a more nuanced discussion of hope that acknowledged the complexity of conflicting discourses and positions. But despite his recognition of the challenges raised by feminism and postmodernism, Freire never abandoned his commitment to hope. This insistence is in part strategic. For him, those who reject hope, who discount human agency and the possibility of a better world as utopian idealism are themselves actively contributing to an oppressive world by encouraging fatalism. For Freire, fatalism was a quality not only expressed by the poor and oppressed who could not imagine a different world, but by those intellectuals who reject any possibility of action in the world because it will always be compromised by uncertainty, never "true." Or by those who are overwhelmed by the tactics of economic "shock and awe," by the alliance of global corporations who seek to strip the world of its resources and the militarized state which polices the policies that allow that devastation. In his later work, Freire spoke of the destruction caused by this form of economic globalization. But he refused to abandon hope of resistance to these seemingly inexorable forces.

For Freire, hope is central for strategic progressive change, It is not enough in itself, but without hope, a vision of a better future, a dream of possibility, we sink into immobility and despair. Freire is well aware of the balance between utopian hope and concrete analysis. As he puts it in Pedagogy of Hope. "I do not mean that, because I am hopeful, I attribute to this hope of mine the power to transform reality all by itself, so that I set out for the fray without taking account of concrete, material data, declaring, 'My hope is enough!'" (10) Freire points out that naive hope without analysis is a recipe for disillusion and cynical pessimism. Instead he calls for "critical hope," a hope grounded in careful analysis and understanding of an historical situation and a move to action. Critical hope is grounded in an understanding of the dialectical relationship of critical understanding and material conditions. It understands rile future not as simply a repetition of today or as the inevitable march of progress. We can have hope about the future not because progress is inevitable or because God is on our side or because we believe it is our destiny to control the world, but because the future will be made through the struggles of human beings. Only in that struggle, will our vision for a more just society be possible:

   In the dialectical perception, the
   future of which we dream is not
   inexorable. We have to make it,
   produce it, else it will not come
   in the form that we would more
   or less wish it to. True, of course,
   we have to make it not arbitrarily,
   but with the materials, with
   the concrete reality, of which we
   dispose, and more as a project, a
   dream, for which we struggle. (11)

Freire's distinction between utopian hope and critical hope is similar to Berenice Fisher's contrast between what she calls "promissory hope" and "cautionary hope." By "promissory hope" she is referring to the belief--particularly prevalent in the revolutionary moment of the late 1960s--that social movements would lead to, in Fisher's words "a near-perfect social world." (12) She contrasts that to the "cautionary hope" that has developed in response to the growth of neo-liberalism, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the seeming triumph of corporate globalization. "Cautionary hope," similar to Foucault's emphasis on micro power and local sates of resistance, focuses on the need for and importance of local struggles. It does not assume a just and peaceful future is either inevitable or impossible, but asserts the importance of maintaining our values and goals and fighting for them in whatever setting we find ourselves. In her discussion of the complexities of this relationship of global and local hopes based on her own teaching, Fisher notes that if a sense of larger possibility is lost, students' "small hopes shrivel, no longer so secure." (13) But when the local is shown to be flawed, a belief in the possibility of large-scale progressive change can also be threatened. For example, when students of color motivated to build a more just society experience racism from those they have taken to be their allies, they may lose hope that a broad movement for change is feasible. The same is true for women if they meet sexism and condescension from men they have seen as gender allies.

In her discussion of these complex manifestations of hope, Fisher speaks of "grounded hope," a hope that emerges from her appreciation of the possibilities of human growth and change and her sense of the richness of classroom exchanges in her own teaching. As she puts it, "This sense of promise is neither great nor small, but grounded in the continued interactions among class members, myself, and the world." (14) This means creating opportunities for dialogue and most importantly, respect for students' voices, and an understanding that they can create spaces for progressive change that she as a teacher might never have imagined. Speaking of feminist teachers, Fisher writes, they "cannot be certain which forms of action will be most effective in achieving gender and other kinds of social justice." (15) These forms of action will emerge from the life circumstances and perceptions of students in reference to their own local struggles. What Fisher offers is her hope and belief in the possibility of progressive change, her respect for students as meaning-making human beings, and her sense that the future is not inevitable, but will be made by human actions in the world.

Berenice Fishers discussion of the grounds for hope in her students supports Freire's assertion that history is the result of human choices and not as a determined or fated narrative in which we as human beings as simply spectators. As Freire argues in a late essay:

   I insist that history is possibility
   and not determinism. We are conditioned
   beings but not determined
   beings. It is impossible to
   understand history as possibility
   if we do not recognize human
   beings as beings who make free
   decisions. Without this form of
   exercise it is not worth speaking
   about ethics. (16)

This understanding of history as possibility and the result of human actions means there is always the possibility of change. We do not live at the end of history; quite the contrary, as the events of the last decade have reminded us so forcefully, we live in the midst of a bewildering and almost unfathomable period of rapid historical change. Asserting hope or claiming the possibility of a better world does not automatically bring that better world into being. Freire continued to insist on the dialectic of analysis and action, of praxis, until the end of his life. As he wrote of liberation:

   Hope of liberation does not mean
   liberation already. It is necessary
   to fight for it, within historically
   favorable conditions. If they do
   not exist, we must hopefully labor
   to create them. Liberation is a
   possibility, not fate nor destiny
   nor burden. In this context, one
   can realize the importance of education
   for decision, for rupture,
   for choice, for ethics at last. (17)

Freire never loses sight of this central claim: that the world we live in is the result of human action, that the future will be made by human beings, that history is not static and unchanging, that the oppressive reality we see around us can be transformed.

These themes of oppression, history, and the need for hope in the present moment, which for me as an American is a moment of shame and despair, were strikingly raised by Ariel Dorfman in his poem, "An Open Letter to America," written one year after the September 11 attacks. I end with a section from that poem, which speaks to the stubborn hope that a more just world is possible:

   My hope for America: empathy,
   compassion, the capacity to
   imagine that you are not unique.

   Yes, America, if this dreadful
   destruction were only to teach
   you that your citizens and your
   dead are not the only ones who
   matter
   on this planet,
   if that experience were to lead
   you to wage a resolute war on the
   multiple terrors
   that haunt our already
   murderous new century.

   An awakening, America.
   Not to be. What did not happen.

   Am I wrong to believe that the
   country that gave the world jazz
   and Faulkner and Eleanor
   Roosevelt
   will be able to look at itself in the
   cracked mirror of history and
   join the rest of humanity,
   not as a city on a separate hill,
   but as one mote city in the
   shining valleys
   of sorrow and uncertainty and
   hope where we all dwell? (18)

NOTES

(1) Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart, p. 45 (New York), Continuum, 1998.

(2) Arundhati Roy, from The Guard/an, April 2, 2003.

(3) Robert C. Byrd, "We Stand Passively Mute." February 12, 2003.

(4) Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1998, p. 27.

(5) P. 29.

(6) P. 39.

(7) P. 40.

(8) P. 73.

(9)Dorothy Smith has analyzed this split extensively. Dorothy Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic. See also Anna Yeatman, Postmodern Revisionings of the Political (New York: Routledge, 1994) and Rosemary Hennesey, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (New York: Routledge, 1993).

(10) Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope. New York Continuum, 1994, p. 8.

(11) Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, p. 101.

(12) Berenice Fisher, No Angel in the Classroom (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) p. 192.

(13) Fisher, No Angel in the Classroom, p. 193.

(14) Fisher, No Angel in the Classroom, p. 194.

(15) Fisher, No Angel in the Classroom, p. 196.

(16) Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart. Continuum, 1998, p. 37.

(17) Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart p. 44.

(18) Ariel Dorfman, "An open letter to America." The Observer (London) Sunday, September 8, 2002.

KATHLEEN WEILER is Professor of Education at Tufts University. She has written a number of works on women and education among them Women Teaching for Change (Bergin and Garvey, 1988) and Country Schoolwomen (Stanford, 1998). Her most recent book is her edited collection Feminist Engagements (Routledge, 2001). She is a member of the Radical Teacher board.