Antonia Darder - Freire and Education (Routledge Key Ideas in Education)

It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice.

Paulo Freire (1970b)

The purpose of this book is not to provide a systematic analysis of Paulo Freires work. Over 100 scholarly books have been written specifically about Freires philosophy, pedagogy, and his life. Moreover, the purpose of this book series is to provide readers with a particular understanding of how contemporary theorists have engaged, in a personal way, the work of historical intellectuals, who have richly influenced their own theories of education. Hence, this is what this book is meant to provide readersa tiny picture of the ways in which Freires writings have informed my own scholarship and the places in his work from which I springboard to reinvent and expand my particular articulation of his contribution to the world. I begin here, because, as is so common on the left, we seem to always be seeking a yet more perfect argument or crystallizing insight or distinct theoretical formulation of past work, through tearing apart even the efforts of those who are our true comrades. So it is important that I dispel from the onset false expectations and, instead, stand solidly on the ground of a critical intersubjectivity.

This book then is about the ways in which Paulo Freires work has personally had an influence on my life and my scholarship in education. The hope is that this contribution to the literature can help young scholars, in a larger way, to understand that the forces of our lived histories and personal proclivities are seldom absent from the theorists we choose to follow or, for that matter, those we disavow. And, as such, we all bring a different perspective to the table about their work and contributions. In many ways, it is precisely these differences, in our reading, interpretations, or reinventions of Freire, for example, which can move us toward developing a greater sensibility of what it means to live a critically intellectual and socially democratic life, as an embodied phenomenon of consciousness and strugglea phenomenon where a multiplicity of perspectives must find a common place to anchor, and a common place to anchor that retains the capacity to hold the multiplicity.

As such, I do not set out here to provide you the definitive reading of Paulo Freire and his contributions to education, but rather to share with you the manner in which his writings have illuminated my life practices and my thinking, as a working class, educator of color in the United States, who has actively struggled, in a myriad of ways, to overcome the impact of my colonization and disempowerment, as a Puerto Rican woman born within U.S. colonialism and reared as a child of the diaspora. Yet, this is not an autobiography, but rather an analysis of solidarity, in mind, heart, and spirit, with one of the most powerful and revolutionary educational philosophers of the 20th centurywho was also an important emissary of hope and possibility.