Abstract
In this article, I discuss the philosophical-educational attention to Freire’s utopian pedagogy of the future and I argue that equal attention should be due to Freire’s dystopian account of the present. To this end, Freire’s utopia and dystopia are associated with the interplay of his notions of annunciation and denunciation. The role of dystopian denunciation for conscientization is then investigated and the ethico-political key characteristic of Freire’s utopianism is concomitantly emphasized. It is shown that, if we are to avoid lopsided interpretations of Freire that blunt the transformative-critical edge of his utopianism, we must supplement epistemological curiosity and radical hope with the ethico-political utopian aspect and recuperate the dialectical unity of denunciation and annunciation.
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Notes
For instance, works that clearly characterize Freire’s pedagogy as utopian (e.g. Suissa 2001; Roberts 2003; Sacadura 2014) and even those that supplement Freire’s utopia with Foucault’s notion of heterotopia (JanMohamed 1993; Fischman and McLaren 2000) and emphasize critique of the current order of things as a step preceding the articulation of hope (Van Heertum 2006) do not engage with Freire’s reliance on dystopia.
Freire (2000), p. 61 was aware of risks of bad utopianism and insisted that ‘the bureaucracy, which threatens to deaden the revolutionary vision and dominate the people in the very name of their freedom’ must be combated. A desirable utopia of cultural action for freedom ‘problematizes’; the cultural action for domination (that I associate with bad utopianism) ‘sloganizes’ (ibid, p. 59). Thus, ‘revolutionary leadership cannot […] make new myths out of the denunciation and annunciation—denunciation and annunciation must be anti-ideological insofar as they result from a scientific knowledge of reality’ (ibid, p. 55).
A quick way of showing the educational relevance of dystopia would be to connect with literature as teaching material. As Peter Roberts explains, for Freire, ‘novels allow educationists to consider how the ideas might be “lived out” through the actions, thoughts, and feelings of characters. Fictional works can also allow readers to see the importance of contexts and relationships in shaping educational lives’. Freire even expands this crossing of genres to film and theatre (Roberts 2008, p. 380). As I see it, this accommodates dystopian novels, films and theatre as material for educational inquiry and inspiration. But this article aims to discuss dystopia meta-theoretically rather than through the lens of teaching strategies and, for this reason, the literary possibility is only stated rather than pursued here.
The term is u/eutopia: in T. More’s sense, no topos qua good topos (Papastephanou 2009).
Thus a utopian narrative which does not reflect an inoperative and passive escapism is preferable to its opposite because of its content, not because it is supposedly more or less utopian than its opposite might be.
Consider, for instance, Freire’s position that annunciation of the transformation of a dehumanizing reality ‘increasingly requires a theory of transformative action’ (Freire 2000, p. 29, emph mine).
However, this is problematic when some dystopias are not quite ‘no topoi’ in the strict sense, but rather, existing ‘infernal’ realities.
As I explain elsewhere (Papastephanou 2009), however, dystopia is usually placed against rather than together with utopia. There have been two main reasons for this. One is that, against the emphasis on the no topos element, as the concept evolved in modernity, the meaning somewhat changed so that the term ‘utopia’ is reserved for what is pronounced exclusively as a good topos; dystopia is presented as its opposite. The other reason is that anti-utopianism tends to appropriate all kinds of nightmarish depictions of fantastic worlds. Thus, all kinds of dystopia have been reduced to imaginary constructions of how horrible the world would be if some utopias were realized. That is, dystopias became weapons in the arsenal of anti-utopianism.
One, of course, may disagree with Freire’s conclusion that anti-utopians can never be utopian. It is possible to show that they presuppose a crypto- or repressed utopia; for more, see Papastephanou (2009).
Anti-utopia, rather than dystopia, is utopia´s real opponent (Geoghegan 2003, p. 153).
Against such tendencies, I have argued elsewhere (Papastephanou 2009) that dystopia can not only be employed by anti-utopianism but also by utopianism (for different purposes, of course).
Darren Webb (2012a), p. 8 gives important reasons why some utopian content is vital for critical pedagogy.
Compare Freire’s statement that to be utopian is ‘to engage in denunciation and annunciation’ (2000, p. 29).
‘To be authentic, revolution must be a continuous event. Otherwise, it will cease to be a revolution, and will become sclerotic bureaucracy’ (Freire 2000, p. 64).
In Darren Webb’s words, ‘Freire regarded utopia as an anthropological constant, an innate human propensity’ (Webb 2012b, p. 596).
As Webb writes, ‘the promise of humanization is experienced as an unconscious ontological pull from the future that drives us on in our journey. By placing repeated emphasis on the inherent openness of the future, however, Freire suggested that our vocation to become more fully human is a point we may move toward but never reach’ (Webb 2012b, p. 596). Webb’s apposite remark shows that vestiges of essentialist messianism do not necessarily entail a blueprint, end-state utopia whose advent might be predictable of imminent. Still, I believe that the ‘ontological pull from the future’ is a quite problematic modern element even if it breaks with end-state imminence. However, this issue cannot be decided here and I leave it aside.
Any quick look at some modern, 18th–19th century utopias suffices to prove the point that a more or less determinate utopia whose content is adequately sketched differs quite a lot, say, from system- or blueprint-utopias [for more on this, see Papastephanou (2009)].
I believe that such ambivalences can be traced back to Rousseauist treatments of the educator/utopian legislator but the exploration of this point requires another article.
In other instances too, it was clear that Freire did not utopianize the role of the educator: As Peter Roberts remarks, ‘we educators need, Freire shows, to see ourselves as part of a much bigger picture and to recognise that the differences we make are often subtle, not easily measurable, and only appreciated later in the lives of those we teach’ (Roberts 2008, p. 383).
Hence a liberating pedagogy ‘only makes sense in relation to a transformation of consciousnesses and societal structures’ (Torres 1994, p. 439).
In my view, it is the other way round: the critique of the present is not carried out through just any imaginative reconstruction of the future but, rather, a specific imaginative reconstruction of the future passes through the critique of those structures of the present that block human flourishing and freedom. The discontent with reality does not merely derive from armchair imaginative operations and experiments with human potentiality (as is often the case with technological pioneering utopias); the ethico-political discontent with reality presupposes universal human potentiality and chastises structural barriers to it as well as the projections of those barriers either to a divine force or to a supposed internal inability of the oppressed to know better.
Lewis acknowledges more explicitly than Webb the dialectical character of annunciation and denunciation: ‘Faith for Freire was not so much a form of knowledge as a dialectical process of annunciation and denunciation’ (Lewis 2010, p. 237); nevertheless, like Webb, Lewis also does not unpack the role that denunciation plays for annunciation.
For instance, conscientization ‘is authentic when the practice of revealing reality constitutes a dynamic and dialectic unity with the practice of transforming reality’ (Torres 1994, p. 439).
Utopia (eutopia) and dystopia, as components of utopianism, make common cause as mutual correctives and directives (Papastephanou 2009).
For, otherwise, ‘if individuals do not subjectively and intrinsically feel free, how can any educational or social mechanism make this happen no matter how good the intention?’ (Sriraman 2007, p. 5).
Surely, it is also complex because, although dystopia with its strong images of unhappiness radicalizes critique, it cannot perform its critical role on its own. As van Heertum rightly remarks, ‘critique alone rarely inspires people to act. We need something to fight for as well as against’ (Van Heertum 2006, p. 45).
Evidently, knowledge on its own does not suffice to lead to denunciation. An ethically insensitive person may know a situation very well but he may find it convenient and profit-bearing, thus being totally unwilling to alter his stance (or the situation). This is why I mention above the necessity of the synergy of ethico-political, cognitive and aesthetic ruptures of the existent.
Compare also another instance where Freire discusses the surplus of conscientization beyond prise de conscience as one of radical critique of dehumanizing reality: ‘conscientization is more than a simple prise de conscience. While it implies overcoming “false consciousness”, overcoming, that is, a semi-transitive or naïve transitive state of consciousness, it implies further the critical insertion of the conscienticized person into a demythologized reality’ (Freire 2000, p. 59).
This estrangement is served by the dystopian pictorial force, as it is manifested, for instance, in the three first chapters of Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1982).
Also, in Freire (2007, ch 3) Freire sketches ‘the main challenges facing us in the 21st century’.
As Roberts puts it, ‘Freire does not hold back in declaring his anger at the destructive impact of neoliberalism and global capitalist greed’ (Roberts 2008, p. 378). Even if one does not accept the Freirean analysis of neoliberalism or qualifies it with more complex accounts, the performativity of his dystopian depiction does not rest on the extent of the accuracy of his diagnoses.
Through this I believe that Freire’s comment that ‘the announced reality is already present in the act of denunciation and annunciation’ (Freire 2000, p. 29) makes much clearer sense.
If, amongst other things, ‘the role of the active utopian educator becomes one of unmasking reality’ (Webb 2012b, p. 608), the face of reality that the fulfillment of this role reveals is dystopian.
For a critique of such communicative utopias see Papastephanou (2010).
Yet, with the exception of Webb’s approach, anthropological discourse is largely missing in current philosophical-educational discussions of Freire.
This, then, is seen as making room for the kind of utopian pedagogy that undertakes the task of sharpening and educating it.
I am talking about a synergy because the ethico-political on its own cannot ground (much worse, replace) all the other characteristics in their mutually corrective and directive role. For, on its own, without epistemic-critical, aesthetic, affective qualifications, the ethico-political may become regressive moralism, sentimental or shallow attachment to unreflective values, etc.
Freire makes it clear that he is not speaking of a market ethics but of a ‘universal human ethic that is not afraid to condemn […] ideological discourse’ such as the ethics of the market (Freire 1998, p. 23).
Yet, even if some prescriptivism crops up in Freire’s thought or is attributed to him by fellow radical educators, I believe that this is due to the exaggerated utopian role that progressive education has allocated to teachers from the times of Rousseau and his identification of the utopian legislator with the educator. Still, this is the subject matter of another article.
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Papastephanou, M. Needing ‘Tomorrow as Fish Need Water’: Dystopia, Utopia, and Freire’s Pedagogy. Interchange 47, 31–49 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-015-9270-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-015-9270-6