First notes on “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paolo Freire. Freire leans heavily on a binary of opressed/oppressor to explain his theories of domination. I do appreciate his usage of terms like “humanism” and love. However, in doing so is Freire relying on an essentialism to promote political action? To preserve or create more humanity, we must fight domination. The increasing of humanity is the ontological vocation of the human. This is almost Christian, I’m sure it’s ripe with problems? But also lovingly radical.
Friere interestingly brings in the concept of the oppressed’s attraction to the oppressor. He says there exists a necrophiliac attraction to death (the deadness of property and objects) in the oppressor conciousness. The oppressed somehow adopt this mindset in their own desires, since the oppressor’s lifestyle falsely symbolises the exit to their own oppression. Freire reveals the OTHER way, outside of wheels of domination: a restoration of humanity for those involved in a situation. He does suggest that violence may be a way to get there, since an act of rebellion can initiate love. While Freire promotes the resoration of humanity for both the opressed and the opressor (who lose their humanity intheir acts of domination), he makes it clear that the violence of the former is very different to the latter: the violence of the oppressed cannot be deemed as a reduction of humanity, since it is in reaction to and to liberate from an act of violence already in place in a situation. Freire is lit!
For radio project: ontological liberation, through reclaiming our spaces we inhabit, to recognise our capacities to act and change a situation, to become involved! restoration of humanity/love: something to remember if modes of spreading awareness need to become more loud/vi0l3nt. The radio project could manifest a sort of self-learning pedagogy through action, with a delicate soft promotion of horizontal learning to tackle inevitable dynamics of domination in a group.