Philosophy of Praxis

Part 1: Paulo Freire's and Antonio Gramsci

Morning Comrades.

As warned in Monday’s dispatch I am not done with this line of thought and we are going to elaborate on the subject of pedagogy, history and what it means to us by focusing on both Paulo Freire's and Antonio Gramsci’s work and how it can help us re-write history and thus help us in our struggle for liberation. I know, history is one of those subjects where most of us wilfully tap out and I understand why. The way we have been taught history is horrible, boring to most of us I’ll say and frankly, this is on purpose. By making history a linear experience of dates and places to remember it becomes a cumbersome and boring exercise of memorization to be tested for no purpose other than standardized servitude. It is anything but.

History, if taught differently, better even has the potential to be one of the most powerful tools of transformation and logically, this does not happen, systemically. From a Marxist perspective, the linear approach to history, particularly in the case of the European history of capitalist conquest, is seen as a deliberate choice reflecting the interests of those in power. Historical narratives are often shaped by the ruling class to maintain their dominance and legitimize the existing socio-economic order.

As in most cases though, the solutions to this status quo have already been explored and significant strides towards liberating alternatives exist already. We do, however, have to dig these out and learn from them, not dogmatically but with them. Today, we are going to focus on two pivotal works, one, Paulo Freire's “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, as well as Gramsci’s concepts of Ideology, Hegemony, and Organic Intellectuals - the later I will dig into deeper on Friday so let’s consider this an introduction of sorts.