Abstract
This dialogue, between a participant of a research team and a woman who was participating in an assembly of participatory budgeting in a city in southern Brazil, could have occurred any place in the nation or in Latin America. She is one of the people who, as we analyzed in the prior chapter, does not have a place in the social contract. “I am dumb, I have no opinion, I do not know how to express myself, what I have to say does not matter…” At the same time, this woman, as so many others, did not give up on her citizenship. She was at an assembly that was discussing the construction of a gymnasium for the school, resources for the firemen, and a proposal for a road.
As far as I know, no philosopher up to now has been sufficiently bold as to say: up to this point man can go and is not able to go beyond. We do not know what our nature permits us to be; none of us has measured the distance that can exist between one man and another man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If there were a nation of gods, they would govern democratically. Men are not suited for such a perfect government.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Notes
Manoel Bonfim, A América Latina—males de origem (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1993), p. 327.
Simon Rodríguez, La Defensa de Bolívar: El Libertador del mediodia de America y sus compañeros de armas defendidos por un amigo de la causa social (Caracas: Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez, Editora Rectorado, 2006), p. 192.
José Martí, Educação em nossa América: Textos selecionados, edited by de Danilo R. Streck (Ijuí: Editora Unijuí, 2007), p. 53.
Walter Mignolo, La Idea de América Latina: La Herida Colonial y la Optión Decolonial (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2005).
See also Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidade do poder e classificação social,” in Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maria de Paulo Rodrigues (eds.), Epistemologias do Sul (Coimbra: Almedina, 2009), pp. 73–118.
Pedro Demo, Cidadania tutelada e cidadania assistida (Campinas: Autores Associados, 1995), p. 7.
“They will tell us: What can we do then? Put aside simulation; renounce the appearance of the sciences and endeavor in the science of the realities; work, work, work, and in the concrete case, close the books and open the eyes… about life.” Words of Franz Tamayo, defending a national pedagogy in Bolivia in 1910. [Franz Tamayo, Creation de la Pedagogia Nacional (La Paz: Biblioteca del Sesquicentenário da Repüblica, 1975), p. 27.]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emílio ou Da Educação (São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1995), p. 12.
“For the classic authors, the issue of education was never separated from the issue of power. Paideia, pedagogy and politics always walked hand in hand. Education—from Plato and Aristotle to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey and Paulo Freire, to mention only a few—has been considered an extension of the political project” [Carlos Alberto Torres, Democracia educação e multiculturalisme/: dilemas da cidadania em um mundo global-izado (Petrópolis: Vozes, 2001), p. 252].
F. Cabral Pinto, A formação humana no projecto da modernidade (Lisboa: Institute Piaget, 1999), p. 123.
This idea was developed in Danilo R. Streck, Pedagogia no encontro de tempos [Pedagogy in the Encounter of Times] (Petrópolis: Vozes, 2001), especially in the first chapter, where an analysis is made of Paulo Freire based on three foundational metaphors in his pedagogy: the line (transition), the rupture, and the plot.
The use of the masculine is intentional to signal the dimension of gender, especially as relates to the canonization of authors considered classics. Thus, Olympe de Gouges, who in 1791 wrote the “Declaration of the Rights of Women,” was forgotten by history and by pedagogy. See Gabriela Bonachi and Angela Groppi, O Dilema da Cidadania (São Paulo: UNESP, 1995).
Paulo Freire, Pedagogia do oprimido (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1981), p. 29. The first two paragraphs of the Portuguese version, from where this quotation is taken, are not included in the English translation [Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972)].
“May you last forever, for the joy of your citizens and the example of the peoples, wise republic and happily constituted” [Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Do contrato social; Ensaio sobre a origem das línguas; Discurso sobre a ori-gem e os fundamentos da desigualdade entre os homens; Discurso sobre as ciências e as artes. Urn discurso sobre as ciências e as artes, edited by Vitor Cfvita (São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1983), p. 221].
See Ítalo Calvino, Porque ler os clássicos (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993).
For an introduction to Rousseau and his pedagogy, with special emphasis on the reception of his ideas in Latin America, see Danilo R. Streck, Rousseau & a educação (Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2008).
Rousseau, therefore, could explain better than any other the tension between regulation and emancipation, the principles that are in the origins of modernity and are constitutive of the social contract. See Boaventura de Sousa Santos, A critica da razão indolente: contra o desperdício da experiência (São Paulo: Cortez. 2000), p. 129.
This is also the opinion of Carlota Boto, A escola do homem novo: entre o Iluminismo e a Revolução Francesa (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade Estadual Paulista, 1996), p. 26, for whom “Rousseau, journey companion in the illuminist movement, could not be confused with the movement.”
Jason Andrew Neidleman, The General Will is Citizenship: Inquiry into French Political Thought (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 50.
Joel Pimentel de Ulhôa, Rousseau e a Utopia da soberania popular (Goiânia: Editora da UFG, 1996), p. 13.
“The paradigm of modernity is very rich and complex, as susceptible to profound variations as to contradictory developments. It is established on two pillars, that of regulation and that of emancipation, each one constituted by three principles or logics. The pillar of regulation is constituted by the principle of the State, formulated essentially by Hobbes, by the market principle, developed mainly by Locke and by Adam Smith, and by the principle of community which dominates the whole political and social theory of Rousseau” [Boaventura de Sousa Santos, A crítica da razão indolente: contra o des-perdicio da experiência (São Paulo: Cortez, 2000), p. 50].
Raul Pont sees in Rousseau the expounder of the egalitarian liberal chain of thought, in the same way as Locke would be for the proprietary chain of thought. See Nilton Bueno Fischer and Jacqueline Moll (eds.), Por uma nova esfera pública: a experiência do orçamento participativo (Petrú;polis: Vozes, 2000).
Richard M. Morse, O Espelho de Prúspero-Culturas e Idéias nas Américas (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998), p. 92.
The author collects information from various countries in an audacious and ambitious project. The study terminates abruptly upon the recognition of the vastness of the task: “Maybe in a somewhat unexpected way the study of the influence of Rousseau in the independence of Latin America ends here—for erudite reasons” [Boleslao Lewin, Rousseau en la independencia de Latinoamerica (Buenos Aires: Depalma), 1980, p. 157]. This recognition is an interesting stimulus for continuing the task.
For an analysis of Rousseau’s influence on Artigas, see Carlos Andrés Montalvo, Rousseau y el contrato social oriental (Montevidéu: s.n., 1989).
A study by Carla Hesse presents a listing of the editions of Rousseau’s works, and it is interesting to note that between 1789 and 1800 there appears no edition in Portuguese or Spanish. To be highlighted are Paris and Switzerland, with editions also from Holland, Germany, and England. This fact seems to confirm Morse’s hypothesis with respect to the vagueness in the reception of Rousseau’s ideas. Carla Hesse, Revolutionary Rousseaus: A Study in Dissemination and Reception (European History & Culture Colloquium, 2002).
Simón Bolivar, “Proclamas y discursos del Libertador” apud Nikolaus Wertz, Pensamiento sociopolítico moderno en América Latina (Caracas: Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1995), p. 39.
See Ricardo Velez Rodríguez, Estado, cultura y sociedad em la América hatina (Santafé de Bogotá: Fundaciôn Universidad Central, 2000).
See Gregório Weinberg, Modelos educativos emla historia de America hatina (Buenos Aires: AZ Editora, 1995), especially chapter 4, “Emancipación.”
On the issue of “structured blindness,” see Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (New York: Cornell University Press, 1997).
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (London: J. M. Dent. 1994), 163.
José Enrique Rodó, Ariel (Buenos Aires: Sopena, 1949), p. 120.
Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Caliban: Apuntes sobre la cultura en nuestra América (México, D.F.: Editorial Diógenes, 1974), p. 35.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, edited by Virginia M. Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (London: Arden, 2000).
Emanuelle Amodio, Formas de la Alteridad: Construcción y difusón de la imagen del indio americano en Europa durante el primer siglo de la conquista de América (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala), 1993, makes an interesting study about the images of the Indian and their diffusion during the period of the conquest of America, relating these images with conceptions of the Other in the form of mythical figures that were already developing throughout the Middle Ages, generally in semihuman forms. Her perspective is that “the Other is constituted as a mirror of the humanity of the subject. Its negativity lays the foundation for the possibility of the I.” This being a universal phenomenon, all societies would be, to a greater or lesser degree, necessarily ethnocentric.
Hèléne de Castres, apud González Monteiro de Espinosa y Marisa González Monteiro de Espinosa, ha Ilustración y el hombre americano. Descripciones etnológicas de la Expedición Malaspina (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1992), p. 13.
Enrique Dussel, 1492: El encubrimiento del Otro: El origen del mito de la modernidad (Santafé de Bogotá: Antropos, 1992), p. 51. In the same line of thought, Vítor Westhelle analyzes how from the theological point of view it can be affirmed that “there is no sin south of the Equator.” It is as if the peoples that live there are out of the range covered by the idea of good and evil.
See Vitor Westhelle, Voces de protesta en América hatina (Chicago: Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 2000) specially the chapter “El tamaño del Paraíso; o, por qué no existiría el pecado al sur del Ecuador? [The size of Paradise; or, why sin would not exist south of the Equator?]”
Bernardette Baker, “(Ap)pointing the Canon: Rousseau’s Émile, Visions of the State, and Education,” Educational Theory, vol. 51, n. 1 (2001), pp. 1–43.
Julia Simon, Beyond Contractual Morality: Ethics, haw and hiterature in Eighteenth-Century France (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2001), p. 44.
Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a transparência e o obstáculo (São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1991), p. 223.
See Bogdan Suchodolski, A pedagogia e as grandes correntes filosóficas: a pedagogia da essência e a pedagogia da existência (Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1984).
See Moacir Gadotti, História das idéias pedagógicas (São Paulo: Êtica, 2001).
See Adriana Puiggrós, Volver a educar: el desafío de la enseñanza argentina a finales del siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Companía Editora Espasa Calpe/Ariel, 1995).
Francisco Cock Fontanella, “Ensaio de pedagogia comparada: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) x Immanuel Kant (1724–1804),” Comunicações vol. 7(2000), p. 113.
Galvano Della Volpe, Rousseau and Marx (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978), p. 30.
Maria Luiza Ribeiro Ferreira, Também há mulheres filósofas (Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 2001), p. 107.
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© 2010 Danilo R. Streck
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Streck, D.R. (2010). Emile and the Limits of Citizenship. In: A New Social Contract in a Latin American Education Context. Palgrave Macmillan’s Postcolonial Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115293_5
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