Abstract
The appropriation of Paulo Freire’s ideas by academic and educators of the West often reduces them to a pedagogical method. This article’s argument affirms that considering his contributions from a strictly pedagogic perspective would empty the educative act of its political content and, according to Freire, would make it as dominating as any other. The text is written in a close relationship with the words of Freire. It is recognized, in the discussion of the challenges we face if we intend to explore the possibilities of practicing a liberating education at the space of management schools, that it is always possible to make something to contradict the dominant and to open space for creativity and hope. In this situation, it necessarily includes the critique of management and its insertion in the process of cultural invasion. The aim is not to provide a conclusive contribution; it is an invitation to future dialogues that embrace Paulo Freire’s ideas mainly around themes such as organization, leadership and education, always keeping in mind the praxeology and the critical ethics that are at the fundament of his propositions.
Introduction
The text starts with the presentation of a situated reading of Paulo Freire. It expresses the inspiration and learnings we had from articulating his propositions with the engagement and study of the organizational praxis of social movements, popular and workers struggles in Latin America. The aim is not to bring these studies to the text. They are mentioned here to explain the situated emphasis on organization and leadership.
Follows a discussion of the possibilities of an education for liberation in management schools, which necessarily involves addressing the critique of management and its insertion in the process of cultural invasion. The discussion includes the constrains of being part of a field of practice and knowledge that contributes to the production and expansion of an invalid social order that reproduces many forms of social injustice, oppression and destruction of ways of life in relation to nature. It also includes the possibilities for a liberating education that would enable students and teachers to critically reflect upon reality and act to change it.
The final part is an invitation to future dialogues around the themes of organization, leadership and education, always keeping in mind the praxeology and the critical ethics that are at the fundament of Freire’s propositions.
As it will be evident, the text has been written in a close relationship with the words of Paulo Freire. The choice is to stay as close and faithful to his words as possible considering the logic of this kind of text, avoiding translations to our way of saying the world and valuing his way of writing that was, at the same time, very objective and very affective.
Before these arguments are systematically developed, it is necessary to introduce the situated reading of Paulo Freire mentioned at the start.
At some point of his life, Paulo Freire was intensely preoccupied with the manipulated use of his ideas and methodological proposals, as he explained in an interview: Look, in the 70s I tried to be intensely preoccupied with these problems. At that time, it was closely associated with the word conscientization, and it was something incredible: wherever I went, I would find the word associated with a project, which was, to a great extent, objectively reactionary, regardless of its sometimes being subjectively naive and sometimes clever. [. . .] So, at that time I said to myself, there are only two ways to face this: the first is what is the use of using the word conscientization? (And after 1987 you will no longer find the word conscientization [. . .]; I never abandoned the comprehension of the process I called conscientization, but I abandoned the word. The second thing that I had to do [. . .] was to clarify and define the most naïve and obscure concepts of my previous work that lent themselves to objectively reactionary uses of my ideas. (Freire, 1994, cited in Escobar et al., 1994: 46)
Afterwards, learning from his personal experience of being misunderstood, ‘especially by the right, and by the liberals too; and sometime by some representatives of the left’, he realized that the only way to avoid it was ‘to do nothing, to stop doing’ (p. 48). Therefore, he kept working and writing incorporating this risk and, at the same time, valuing ‘the joy of being “authenticated”’ (p. 49).
Giroux (1992) also contributes to a reflection on the appropriation of Freire’s propositions ‘by academics, adult educators, and others who inhabit the ideology of the West in ways that often reduce it to a pedagogical technique or method’ that speaks less to ‘a political project constructed amidst concrete struggles’ than they do to ‘the insipid and dreary demands for pedagogical recipes dressed up in the jargon of abstracted progressive labels’ (p. 15). He adds that what has been increasingly lost is the profound and radical nature of Freire’s ‘theory and practice as an anti-colonial and postcolonial discourse’ in such a way that it testifies to how a politics of location works in the interest of privilege and power to cross cultural, political, and textual borders so as to deny the specificity of the other and to reimpose the discourse and practice of colonial hegemony. (Giroux, 1992: 16)
The anti-colonial character of Freire’s oeuvre is evident, from his first writings to his late work. It is worth to mention that a central aspect of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed – ‘the existential duality of the oppressed, who are at the same time themselves and the oppressor whose image they have internalized’ (Freire, 2005b: 62) – was formulated under the influence of Franz Fanon and Albert Memmi. Gadotti (2012) reminds us that this book was written in the context of Latin American and African revolutionary struggles, as well as strong emancipatory movements of peasants, black, indigenous and racialized people, as well as women and students, systematizing a conception of education that responded to the necessity felt by militants and revolutionary educators.
In a direct dialogue with Fanon (2004), who said that the aggressiveness deposited in the colonized man’s bones will many times first manifest against his own people, Freire (2005b) mentions that under the restrictions of the oppressive order, the oppressed ‘often manifest a type of horizontal violence, striking out at their own comrades for the pettiest reasons’, once more manifesting their duality. Hence, ‘because the oppressor exists within their oppressed comrades, when they attack those comrades, they are indirectly attacking the oppressor as well’ (Freire, 2005b: 62). This existential duality of the oppressed is connected to the dimension of dehumanization, which has the same meaning in Freire and in Fanon (2004): the oppressed or the colonized cannot clearly recognize the oppressor or the colonizer; hence, they cannot recognize their own humanity.
A part of this existential duality is found in the desire to resemble the oppressor. This formulation is inspired by Memmi’s (1991) analysis of the colonized mentality, and the contempt felt towards the colonizer, which is mixed with ‘passionate’ attraction (Freire, 2005b). Again, dehumanization is a central dimension. When the mythic version of the colonizer is internalized by the colonized, the latter is transformed into a non-being, dehumanized and without history. Submerged, immersed in the reality, ‘the oppressed cannot perceive clearly the “order” which serves the interests of the oppressors whose image they have internalized’ (Freire, 2005b: 62).
These dialogues are relevant because they allow the understanding of at least two key categories – liberation and humanization – as part the critical–ethical attitude that is at the fundament of Paulo Freire’s writings and praxis.
According to Mouján (2018), in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the expression ‘liberation’ still refers to ‘the modern European legacy of emancipation but is closely linked to a radical political position carried out from the borders, from an anti-colonial rationality that [. . .] assumes the political urgency of the denied alterity’ (p. 11). For the author, in the same way than in Fanon, in Freire the problem of liberation has, on one hand, universal connotations in the idea of establishing a new humanism, a new human being, and, on the other, it has a local singular connotation of a determined historical existence. (Mouján, 2018: 13)
This universal connotation is inscribed in an ethics of life; a philosophical attitude shared with the wider movement of liberation that was very present in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. 1 Such ethics has a normative critical–material principle: the production and reproduction of human life in community (Dussel, 1995, 2013). In dialogue with Paulo Freire, Dussel (2004) mentions that the intersubjective consensus of the oppressed uncovers the system, which is presented as natural and good, as invalid and perverse because it uses the lives of the oppressed as means for its objective of endless reproduction and expansion, no matter the adverse impacts.
Therefore, when the intersubjective consensus of the oppressed is formed, the system loses its validity and, in the eyes of the dominated, it solely appears as repressive, as a dominating anti-validity. Besides that, those who share experiences with the oppressed can reflexively think about the situation of the Other and construct a thematically explicit scientifically informed critique, becoming part of a process that can result in a moment that is existential, historical and practical. This moment includes organizational processes, which express the anti-hegemonic consensus in concrete struggles and in the construction of alternatives.
The Freirean critical ethics is specifically expressed in the praxis of an education that poses as a challenge the conquest of autonomy and freedom, a condition for the humanization of historical subjects that need to break free from the oppressor internalized. This process of conscientization is indispensable for the organization of the oppressed in concrete transformative praxis of liberation.
The paragraphs above introduce a space for stating the position from which this text is written. In our reading and dialogue with Paulo Freire’s propositions to the study and engagement with the organization of social movements, popular and workers struggles in Latin America, we try to ‘authenticate’ the political radicality of his ideas and praxis. In this sense, one of the aims of our research group 2 is to learn and to disseminate the knowledge that is produced from below in the organizational praxis of activists, a knowledge that tends to remain restricted to the spaces of struggle. We do it following indications made by Paulo Freire: ‘a radical and critical education has to focus on what is taking place today in various social movements and labour unions’ in which a ‘pedagogy of resistance’ is being generated (Freire and Macedo, 1987: 40); ‘in the intimacy of social movements for transformation, we find a very dynamic moment of transformation’. He also alerted that it is a mistake ‘to separate the global dynamics of social change from our educational practice’ (Shor and Freire, 1987: 181).
At the same time, we recognize the limitations to the praxis of an education for liberation in the space of management schools. To recognize the existence of limitations is the way of avoiding falling, ‘on one hand, into an annihilating pessimism and, on the other, into a cynical opportunism’ (Freire, 1981), and to understand that ‘it is always possible, in any society, to make something institutional that contradicts the dominant ideology’ (p. 119). What we should do, he says, ‘is to measure the spaces within the institutions where we are’. These spaces ‘being political, are historical’ (Freire, 2005a: 38). Therefore, historically, they close and open opportunities for creative ways to overcome constrains and limitations.
Conscientization, organization and leadership
As it was mentioned in the ‘Introduction’ section, Freire (1994, cited in Escobar et al., 1994) abandoned the use of the word conscientization, but not the comprehension of the process he called conscientization. Without the understanding of this process, it is not possible to understand the political implications of an education for liberation.
Freire (2000) affirms that ‘conscientization is more than a simple prise de conscience. While it implies overcoming “false consciousness” [. . .], it implies further the critical insertion of the conscientized person into a demythologized reality’ (p. 59). Therefore, ‘critical consciousness is brought about not through an intellectual effort alone, but through praxis – through the authentic union of action and reflection’ (Freire, 2000: 61). In another opportunity, he explains that ‘reflection alone is not enough for the process of liberation’; ‘we need praxis, or, in other words, we need to transform the reality in which we are’ (Freire, 1981, cited Davis and Freire, 1981: 60). Hence, consciousness is a necessity in terms of the unity between action and reflection, it is not a purpose in itself. Consciousness is how ‘the people, through a true praxis, leave behind the status of objects to assume the status of historical subjects’ (Freire, 2005b: 160).
Freire (1981) criticizes his own position in Educação como prática da liberdade,
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in which he wrote that the process of conscientization, considered as the moment of unveiling social reality, was ‘a kind of psychological motivator for its transformation’ (p. 117): My mistake was not, obviously, to recognize the fundamental importance of the knowledge of reality in the process of transforming it. My mistake consisted in not taking these poles – knowledge of reality and transformation of reality – in their dialecticism. It was as if the unveiling of reality already meant its transformation. [. . .] This same mistake [. . .] I have been finding in my current experience, sometimes even more accentuated, with pedagogues who do not see the political dimensions and implications of their pedagogical practices (Freire, 1981: 117).
This aspect of a ‘strictly pedagogic conscientization’ will be addressed in the next section. At this point, it is relevant to clarify the ontological fundament of consciousness inseparably articulated with praxis.
Freire (2000) adopts Marx’s (2013) explanation that ‘what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the hive in his mind before constructing it in wax’ (p. 115), meaning that human beings alone ‘are capable of entertaining the result of their action before initiating the proposed action’ (Freire, 2000: 42). Taking this ontological position into consideration, it can be clearly understood that ‘consciousness is intentionality towards transforming the world’ (Freire, 1981, cited Davis and Freire, 1981: 59).
As beings of reflection and action, as beings of praxis, ‘humans find themselves marked by the results of their own actions in their relations with the world, and through the action on it’: ‘by acting they transform; by transforming they create a reality which conditions their manner of action’ (Freire, 1982: 102). Therefore, consciousness and teleology express only a potentiality of controlling the conditions of human self-realization. According to Lukács (1978), inspired by the same analogy as the bee and architect made by Marx (2013), this potentiality is found in the human capacity of consciously choosing between alternatives and defining causal series required for their realization. Hence, the ontological fundament of freedom consists in ‘a concrete decision between different concrete possibilities’, and freedom is ‘ultimately a desire to alter reality’ (Marx, 2013: 114). The dialectics between determinacy and freedom is at the centre of a social complex in which freedom is determined by necessity, and knowledge is a general precondition. What we have is an account of teleology that includes open-ended possibilities of emancipatory-liberating social transformation and has, at its centre, the problem of organization.
For Lukács (1971), organization is ‘the mediation between theory and practice’ (p. 299). In other words, that which is theoretical, that is an idea, must be made present organizationally to become practical in a real struggle. For Freire (2005b), in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, organization is also a mediation and can be the antagonistic opposite of manipulation. If it results from unity for liberation and from a cultural synthesis between leaders and the oppressed, ‘organization serves the ends of liberation’ (Freire, 2005b: 183). The notions of unity for liberation and cultural synthesis will become clear when the theory of dialogical action is presented.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is constructed in such a way that the first chapters are a preparation for the last one, which offers the most important contribution: the theories of anti-dialogical and dialogical action. Despite the relevance of themes such as banking education and dialogical pedagogy, ignoring or underestimating the importance of the final chapter is a way of deradicalizing the political contribution of Paulo Freire (2005b) to the praxis of liberation. In this part of the book, he also provides a very important contribution to the problem of the relationship between leaders and oppressed from a revolutionary perspective.
It is reasonable to assume that the words ‘revolutionary’ and ‘revolution’ present in many parts of the final chapter contributed to silencing it. Freire’s revolutionary reason 4 tends to be considered outdated in a moment of history in which popular struggles and mass insurgencies would have no more space. However, history insists on reminding us that the people constantly rebel in organized movements as well as in apparently chaotic insurrections. It would be a betrayal of the people of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador (just to mention recent massive uprisings 5 ), of those who organize and struggle in their territories in defence of ways of life in relation with nature, and of the workers who constantly and everywhere organize to claim better working conditions and against labour precarity, to ignore that the word ‘revolution’ and revolutionary praxis are part of the living world for many people around the globe. And it would also be a betrayal of Paulo Freire.
The meaning of the expression ‘actuality of the revolution’ is that each present situation of struggle is considered part of the concrete context of the socio-historic totality, and is perceived as a moment of liberation (Lukács, 2009). Romão (2012) explains that, for Freire (2014), the meaning of revolutionary praxis relates to the imperative of collectively creating a new order when a dialectical relationship is established between ‘limit situations’ and ‘untested feasibilities’.
Limit situations imply the existence of the dominant and the oppressed. Limit situations are present when the latter perceive ‘obstacles they know exist and need to be broken through’, and ‘devote themselves to overcoming them’ [. . .] ‘in an atmosphere of hope and confidence’. The acts to confront limit situations are named ‘limit acts’, suggesting the rejection of ‘a docile, passive acceptance of what is there’ and a response to a call to mobilize, ‘to uncover some untested feasibility’ (Freire, 2014: 167), something the utopian dreamer knows exist, but knows that it will be attained only through a practice of liberation which can be implemented by dialogical actions.
In the final chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (2005b) starts presenting the theory of anti-dialogical oppressive action, which has main characteristics: (1) conquest – the conqueror imposes his objectives on the vanquished, who internalize them and become an ambiguous being reduced to the status of thing; (2) divide and rule – the oppressor must ‘halt, by any method (including violence) any action [. . .] which could awaken the oppressed to the need for unity’, and must label ‘concepts such as unity, organization, and struggle as dangerous’ (p. 141); (3) manipulation – like the conquest whose objective it serves, ‘it attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think’ (p. 149) operating by means of pacts between the dominant and the dominated classes, unauthentic organizations that prevent threatening alternatives, populist leaderships and tactics, among others; (4) cultural invasion – it ‘may be practiced by a metropolitan society upon a dependent society, or it may be implicit in the domination of one class over another within the same society’, cultural conquest leads to the ‘cultural inauthenticity of those who are invaded: they begin to respond to the values, to the standards, and the goals of the invaders’ (p. 153). These characteristics can be recognized in the practice of management understood as an instrument of control and domination which is necessary to maintain the workers in a position of subaltern docility and/or actively contributing to their own exploitation.
For the praxis of liberation, Freire (2005b) proposes a theory of dialogical action with the following four constituent elements that confront the praxis of oppression:
Cooperation – subjects meet in dialogue to transform the world. It is not accepted any kind of imposition, manipulation, domestication, or conquest of the oppressed by the leaders who act as educators in cooperative dialogues. In these dialogues, the subjects involved focus ‘their attention on the reality which mediates them and which – posed as a problem – challenges them’ (Freire, 2005b: 168) to transformer it. This dialogical cooperation is required to unveil the world and the people themselves. Freire (2005b) makes it clear that the leaders must believe in the potentialities of the people and in their capacity of participating in their own liberation. But, at the same time, they ‘must always mistrust the ambiguity of the oppressed, mistrust the oppressor housed in them’ (Freire, 2005b: 168), hence the need of cultural synthesis.
Unity for liberation – ‘the leaders must dedicate themselves to an untiring effort for unity among the oppressed and unity of the leaders with the oppressed’ (Freire, 2005b: 172). The praxis of oppression is easy for the dominant elites because they have the instruments of power. The praxis of liberation cannot exist without the people, and this is the first obstacle to the efforts of organization because the existential ambiguity makes ‘the oppressed person ambiguous, emotionally unstable, and fearful of freedom’, facilitating the divisive action of the dominator. To achieve their unity, the oppressed need a form of cultural action that would make them conscious of being oppressed individuals, ‘persons prevented from being’. However, this is not enough. They need to ‘move from consciousness of themselves as oppressed individuals to the consciousness of oppressed class’, 6 because the ‘unity of the oppressed involves solidarity among them, regardless of their exact status’ (Freire, 2005b: 174).
Organization – it is the antagonistic opposite of manipulation and the natural development of unity. The leader, as an educator, is a ‘constant, humble, and courageous witness’ (Freire, 2005b: 176) who works alongside the oppressed, learns with their experience and shares critical knowledge. There is a clear refusal of any kind of vanguardist leadership. Through dialogue, the leaders must say the word with the people. When they impose their decisions, they manipulate the people; they do not contribute to the liberation, they oppress. Through dialogue and delegation, authentic authority can be affirmed, not as transference of power (that can easily degenerate into authoritarianism), but through delegation. Organization is ‘a highly educational process in which leaders and people together experience true authority and freedom, which they then seek to establish in society by transforming the reality which mediates them’ (Freire, 2005b: 179).
Cultural synthesis – it is ‘a mode of action for confronting culture itself, as the preserver of the very structures by which it is formed’. As historical action, it is ‘an instrument for superseding the dominant alienated and alienating culture’ (Freire, 2005b: 180). Thematic critique is central, because those who are invaded rarely go beyond the models prescribed by the invaders. Therefore, the aim of cultural synthesis is ‘to resolve the contradiction between the world view of the leaders and that of the people, to the enrichment of both’ (Freire, 2005b: 181), not denying the differences, but affirming the support each gives to the other.
Paulo Freire’s (2005b) theory of dialogical action offers ethical principles that challenge the predefinition of a form or a process of organizing that would be the most adequate for struggles of liberation. Debates around horizontality 7 can illustrate the relevance of this contribution.
Sitrin (2006) explains that horizontality is a sensibility based on the rejection of hierarchies and authoritarianism to collectively construct responses to specific problems or situations. Therefore, the defining characteristics are horizontal consensus-based decision-making, non-hierarchical relations, direct democracy. This logic suggests a leaderless organization and, therefore, poses the problem of understanding the construction and contestation of leadership, as indicated by Sutherland et al. (2014).
Even if we consider horizontality ‘as a mobilizing utopia, as a beckoning horizon, as a requirement of achievement’ (Dri, 2006: 77), a conversation with Paulo Freire, and with Franz Fanon and Albert Memmi, would immediately alert to the limits and risks of the emphasis on a consensus process based on the decision-making of individuals. These authors would remind us that the existential duality of the oppressed or colonized demands organizational processes in which educators and the people, through dialogue, retain their identities while learning and transforming themselves together in such a way that they become jointly responsible for overcoming cultural invasion and leading in constant interaction.
Arruzza (2012) provides a contribution based on her experience as a participant of the Occupy Wall Street. She reflected about the practice of consensus and the tendency of cultivating the illusion of an impossible homogeneity, which would be counterproductive even if it were realized. For her, it would limit the diversity of the ways in which class, race and gender interests can be represented in a political position or decision. However, it is more than that. If the oppressed ‘house the oppressor’ and are embedded in the dominant alienated and alienating culture, consensus building would have to be preceded by a process of thematic critique that could not be realized by a group of individuals assumed as such. Not to mention that the essentialization of individuals is at the core of neoliberalism and can be interpreted as part of the cultural invasion effectiveness.
The centrality of individuals has been critically addressed by others. Sotiris (2012) reflects on the Greek movement, which included gatherings of thousands in Syntagma Square and other public spaces from May to August 2011. He values the potential and the example of collective action but did not underestimate the limits that result from emphasizing the participation of individuals and the refusal of political mediations that would allow the construction of collective identities, solidarity and cooperation. Ezquerra (2012: 44), focusing on the experience of the Spanish 15-M movement, alerts to the risk of transforming the local partial experience in a kind of elitist community composed by affinity groups, while the political-economic power retains its interests intact and most of the population remains excluded of the mobilization. For Romano and Díaz Parra (2018), the emphasis on meeting spaces of individuals who disdain the construction of strategies beyond the local contains an anti-political stance that reinforces what it intends to confront. Harvey (2012) also indicates the limits of organizational practices based on localism and autonomous individuals to confront the neoliberal class strategies of social reproduction and prevent the escalation of their consequences.
Let us get back to the theory of dialogical action and consider its contributions to overcome these limitations. The theory is didactically presented in four elements that are obviously interconnected and inseparable in the world of praxis. The acts to confront limit situations may have an immediate objective that is necessary, for example, to guarantee the reproduction of life. However, the subjects involved (leaders/educators and oppressed) must go beyond and unveil the connections that make this immediate objective a necessity. Otherwise, without the knowledge about the concrete historical situation of which the immediate problem is just one dimension, the critical consciousness indispensable ‘to engage in authentic transformation of reality’ would not be achieved (Freire, 2005b: 183). Simultaneously, the consciousness of being not just an oppressed individual, but part of an oppressed class, would also not be achieved. Without cultural synthesis, an expression of the cooperative dialogical relationship between the oppressed and the leaders, unity and class solidarity, organization as a means for liberation would not be constructed. In an obviously biased reading of Paulo Freire, from someone who belongs to the field of Organization Studies, it is possible to interpret the theory of dialogical action as an organization centred theory for the praxis of liberation. In other words, organization as a means for the praxis of liberation can only exist as a result of cooperation, unity and cultural synthesis. And the existence of leaders is inherent to this whole process.
In the same way that one can find a theoretical contribution to reflect on the praxis of organizing liberating struggles, it can also be found a theoretical contribution to reflect on the meaning and relevance of leaders in these processes. It is clear so far that leaders have an educative contribution necessary to problematize the cultural invasion of the oppressed. As teachers, they teach and learn. They reject the myth of the ignorance of the people but remain alert to the presence of the oppressor housed in the oppressed. The leaders are prevented from saying their own word and they cannot name the world alone (Freire, 2005b).
It is relevant to make it clear that the rejection of both authoritarianism and licence does not mean the rejection of authority. For Paulo Freire, ‘there is no freedom without authority, but there is also no authority without freedom’. As it was mentioned, ‘authentic authority is not affirmed as such by a mere transfer of power, but through delegation or in sympathetic adherence’ (Freire, 2005b: 178). If authority is merely transferred from one group to another, or is imposed upon the majority, it degenerates into authoritarianism and the denial of freedom. This proposition can be articulated with more recent contributions related to the praxis of liberation. Dussel (2008), inspired by the principle originated at the Mexican Zapatista movement – lead by obeying (mandar obedeciendo) – stresses a positive concept of power: potestas, the delegated exercise of power, which differs from power in itself exercised in a fetishized way, separated from its foundation. Those who lead by obeying are representatives who act not for themselves as a final resource of authority but expressing the originary power of the people.
It can be said that Freire (2005b) offers a dialogical theory of leadership based on a dialectical relationship in which the leader learns from the experience of the oppressed and contributes with a critical knowledge in such a way that both are indispensable participants of a collective cooperative process. Dialogue is central and demands the leader or educator to be ‘a humble and courageous witness’ (Freire, 2005b: 176), someone who can only say the word, name the world, with the people. Dialogue is not a procedure, is not a tool or a pedagogical instrument, dialogue is an ethical attitude.
Possibilities of a liberating education in management schools
Paulo Freire (1972) differentiated education for liberation from education for domestication. The first is ‘an eminently Utopian praxis’ [. . .] ‘expressed in the permanent state of unity which exists between the acts of denouncing and announcing’; the latter satisfies the dominant elites and corresponds to their ideology, it can only denunciate ‘those who denounce them’ and can only announce ‘their own myths’ (Freire, 1972: 179). Only education for liberation can be Utopian, prophetic, and hopeful because only those who are dominated can truly denounce and announce – denounce the world in which they exist but are forbidden to be and announce the world in which they are able to be, and which demands their historical commitment in order for it to be brought into being. (Freire, 1972: 180)
The syntagma ‘denounce-announce’ articulates the negative moment of critique with the positive creation of alternatives, of ‘untested-feasibilities’. According to Freire (1981), the denouncement which is based on a distant knowledge of reality is not valid; nor is the act of denouncing and announcing made in solitude, separated from the popular masses. This kind of act expresses an authoritarian attitude towards the oppressed, instead of an historical commitment.
These statements highlight the immense challenges to face if we intend to explore possibilities of practicing a liberating education at the space of management schools. So far, it is clear that the Freirean contributions are not being considered from a strictly pedagogic perspective, a practice that would empty the educative act of its political content and, according to Freire (1981), would make this act ‘as domesticating as any other’ (p. 89).
Before addressing the challenges, it is necessary to explain why ‘management schools’ are being considered as a homogeneous entity when this assumption obviously does not correspond to the concrete reality of specific schools in each specific socio-economic-historical location. However, it is also obvious that management schools share a basic fundament that has become more and more homogenized in the last decades: management in its managerialist version, expanding from a set of management practices to become an all-embracing societal discourse 8 (Klikauer, 2015).
Here resides the main obstacle for a liberating education in management schools. If managerialism is a practical–operational arm of neoliberalism, understood as the mode of existence of contemporary capitalism (Saad-Filho, 2017), if it has a pervasive cultural infiltration in all spheres of associated life and, if these schools are, for having management as its core teaching theme and reason of existence, privileged vehicles for disseminating it, courses’ contents and research agendas will tend to be subordinated to this wider process of cultural invasion. The same tends to happen with politico-institutional and administrative practices, many times under the pressure of external bodies.
Let us first ethically negate the validity of using the Freirean pedagogical methodologies to disseminate contents that are part of this contemporary process of cultural invasion. It would be dramatically inappropriate, and even cynical, to use these methodologies to better teach contents that support and contribute to the reproduction of the existing exploitative and oppressive social order. Let us positively affirm a meaning of critical pedagogy that is shared with McLaren and Giroux (1995) and considers it as a commitment to forms of learning and action that are undertaken in solidarity with subordinated groups and dedicated to processes of social transformation.
Having said that and following Freire’s (1981) indication that it is always possible to make something within the institutions where we are to contradict the dominant and to open space for creativity and hope, we can explore some possibilities.
There an obvious space for us to become subjects of our agency as workers. To be part of a teacher’s union does not only express that we are organized in defence of our rights and working conditions, but it also expresses that we assume ourselves as members of the working class in solidarity with workers in their struggles. It is also evidence of the unity between speech and action. To become an active member of a union is also a learning process; it involves facing all the contradictions we find in the struggles against oppression and exploitation, mainly in institutionalized organizations. It involves, most of the times, the conscious dispute around anti-dialogical × dialogical actions, disputes that we can only do if we are present at these valuable spaces.
What about possibilities and limits for a liberating education in the teaching process, considering that it should enable students and teachers to critically reflect upon the reality and act to change it?
The stimulus and dialogue based on critical reflections are concrete possibilities if we consider that the relationship between teachers and students remains reasonably protected as an autonomous space. We can challenge the students to think about the social reality, without imposing our own position but always confronting hate discourses and fatalist hopelessness positions about the world. We can structure the teaching process around the vocalization of certain words that can initiate consciousness-raising, as Kociatkiewicz et al. (2022) recommend referring to the word ‘capitalism’. Fotaki and Prasad (2015), in the same direction, ‘argue that business schools need to question the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and economic inequalities, and to consider how management educators might inform this relationship’ (p. 559), offering pedagogical alternatives for subverting the existing status quo.
We have a sedimented body of knowledge produce by the critical management studies community and by anti-management authors from all over the world that we can share with the students as a means for breaking with the hegemony of managerialism. But mainly, we have studies and many forms of testimonies from communities that organize to struggle in defence of ways of life in relation with nature, from collectives that organize to confront oppression in its many forms and to affirm identities and rights; from territorialized groups of people who organize to find ways to have means for reproducing their lives amid situations of extreme poverty, among so many others. These studies and testimonies are an impressive source of knowledge on the negative impact of management for the concrete reality of communities and societies, as well from the organization of struggles and many forms of resistance to confront it.
Giroux (2010) highlights that Paulo Freire gave ‘new meanings to the politics of daily life while affirming the importance of theory in opening up the space of critique, possibility, politics, and practice’. Theory is not an end in itself, ‘it is a resource whose value lay in understanding, critically engaging, and transforming the world’ (Giroux, 2010: 720).
Having this in mind, we should recognize that what we can do in the learning process should move beyond theoretical discussions and attempts of rising critical awareness. They are important, but they are not enough from a Freirean perspective. McLaren and Giroux (1995), referring to the context of North American schools, mention the risk of what they define as ‘the endemic weaknesses of a theoretical project overly concerned with developing a language of critique’ (p. 32), of a one-sided moral indignation that is a problem if not accompanied by a vision to shape the actions of a critical praxis. Despite being a reflection produced in a very specific context, it has a content that can serve as an alert to our teaching process in management schools.
Another reason for caution is the risk of falling into an idealist illusion of transforming consciousness into a kind of panacea, producing a distortion by negating the dialectical relationship between conscience and reality. The result would be transforming the individual subjective process of self-consciousness into an end, essentializing subjectivity and interrupting what Freire (1981) calls ‘the crossing from subjectivity to objectivity’. He explains that ‘in the same way as the gnoseological cycle does not end at the stage of knowledge acquisition because it continues to the creation of a new knowledge, conscientization cannot stop at the stage of unveiling reality’. The authenticity of conscientization occurs ‘when the practice of unveiling reality constitutes a new dynamic and a new dialectics with the practice of transformation’ (Freire, 1981: 117).
Zulfiqar and Prasad (2021: 176) show the potentialities and limitations of educational processes of consciousness-raising, illustrating this argument. They tell us how an exercise with management students at an elite private business school in Pakistan contributed to produce feelings of awareness about their responsibilities towards those that are less privileged, and that one of them ‘actively participated in a recent sit-in at the university alongside the custodial staff who had not received their pay in time for the holidays’. The student that went beyond realizing the injustices at the intersubjective dimension and became part of a collective praxis showed the meaning of the authenticity of conscientization.
In other words, as it was mentioned at the start of this section, for Paulo Freire (1981), the critical understanding of reality involves the acts of denouncing and announcing. The act of denouncing, the negative critique, is based on a reading of the world that looks for the reasons of what is perceived in need of transcendence. To announce involves overcoming idealist conjectures of what should or could be, it involves the political action to create concrete possibilities – limit acts to construct untested feasibilities. The implication is that we should face the challenge of moving beyond the critique and opening spaces for solidarity and hope not only for ourselves, but for the students who become politically and ethically motivated.
If the praxis of a liberating education in the Freirean sense involves ‘the creation of conditions for social transformation through the constitution of students as political subjects who recognize their historical, racial, class, and gender situatedness’, then we should move beyond ‘a language of critique and demystification’ and develop a language of possibilities (McLaren and Giroux, 1995: 38). The reading of the world is a pedagogical–political act which is inseparable from some form of political–organizational act to intervene in the creation of possibilities.
We are immersed in a world of social injustices, violence and oppressions; we are also immersed in a world of social struggles, solidarity and hope. To acquire consciousness means that we become part of a collective force and develop the need of acting in our material surroundings. Therefore, part of the learning process is to introduce the students to the many circumstances in which, depending on their interests and insertion, they can find a voice and a space for engagement. Most of them are already activists and are involved with different kinds of organizations and issues, such as students’ unions; youth sectors of progressive political parties; anti-racist, feminist and/or LGBTQIAPN+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, aromantic/asexual, polyamorous/pansexual, non-binary) movements; support for homeless people; collectives aiming to stop and reverse the disastrous process of environmental destruction. Most of them will tend to keep these activities for themselves, perceiving them as incoherent with the logic of a management school. A space of dialogue and openness, welcoming various ways of sharing their activism with the colleagues is another form of providing stimulus for those interested in going beyond the stage of critical theoretical awareness and intervene.
It should be clear that this kind of movement does not involve any kind of voluntarism. Besides, constrains imposed by being part of management schools, in each specific socio-economic formation and in each specific institution we will need to access what is historically possible to do. It is indispensable to recognize and understand the limits as the only way to find ways of confronting them. In some circumstances, a high sense of responsibility must be present not to put at risk the students and our own safety, always avoiding falling into paralysing forms of hopelessness. It should also be clear that most of the students, in the context of a management school, will not be interested in going beyond the formal indispensable academic tasks. Most of them will even resist critical approaches. Then, the Freirean pedagogical instruments will be very useful to maintain a healthy environment in the classroom without imposing our own views but without conceding to reactionary expressions of hate that may happen in some contexts.
Finally, at some point, it arises the inevitability of negating management. To construct a thematically scientifically informed critique in solidarity with those who are oppressed, we should develop an attitude that is defined by Dussel (1995) as analectics. We cannot make this critique from the distance and separated from the oppressed. To make it, it is necessary to look ‘beyond the existing totality’ that justifies ‘the oppression of the oppressed and the exclusion of the Other’ (Dussel, 1995: 285). Ana means ‘beyond’ and refers to the need of looking beyond the horizon of the world to see from the perspective of the Other. Analectics requires the openness to think, to listen, to see, to feel, to taste the world from the perspective of the Other, it is conditioned by humbleness and solidarity, it challenges hierarchies, it is a politics of subversion and contestation (Mendieta, 2001).
To produce knowledge beyond the horizon of the world that oppresses and excludes the Other in management schools implies that we assume the contradictions of our position as members of a space whose raison d’être is to produce and disseminate practical–operational instruments and discourses that the oppressed confront as part of their praxis of liberation. Paulo Freire (1981) indicates that a critique that remains contained by what it aims to criticize does not fully embraces knowledge as a process that implies action. He explains that a committed attitude would accept that ‘every theme has its opposite and involves tasks to be accomplished’. Therefore, when we unveil a theme, we also unveil its opposite, what imposes on us ‘a form of action coherent with the tasks outlined in the theme’ (Freire, 1981: 79).
The opposite of management, the negative critique of management, an anti-management critique arises from the critical study of its genesis and functions as part of the historical development of capitalist social relations of production, as well as from struggles that confront its validity. When the oppressed organize in defence of life, their critical anti-hegemonic process confronts the dominant and dominating system and, at the same time, outlines a viable utopian project, aiming to build new norms and institutions. The struggles in defence of ways of life in relation to nature which are threatened, for example, by extractive corporations making use of management artefacts, such as Corporate Social Responsibility, help the understanding of Dussel’s (2004) statement that the ‘content of ethics (the production, reproduction and development of life in community) has, abstractly, its own universality and always materially determine all levels of formal ethics’ (p. 344). Therefore, from the position of the oppressed community of life, it is necessary to demonstrate the contradictory position of those institutions, technologies and discourses (management and managerialism among them) that intend to reproduce and enhance various forms of oppression, that is, that negate life. It is necessary to affirm the impossibility of choosing death, as well the destruction of humanity and the planet.
Being in management schools, we are in a privileged position to hear and to understand the negative critique made from the positivity of the ethical principle of life, when the oppressed realize the non-validity of the system and the central role management plays on it. At the same time, we can act in solidarity, analectically, experiencing with the people the confrontation of the actual consensus and elaborating the formal intersubjective consensus of the oppressed. In the process of building this consensus, the oppressed create, in hope, a future validity based on the guarantee of life and on the collective construction of organizational dialogical actions.
Ideas for future dialogues
To work under the inspiration of Paulo Freire is encouraging and challenging. To do it in management schools is even more.
For some of us, the research and teaching space of Organization Studies opens a space of freedom, because we can define what organizational reality we take into consideration and then experience approaches and engagements influenced by the pedagogy as well by the ethics of liberation.
For all of us, being members of management schools is a contradiction and an opportunity. The contradiction is that even involuntarily, we are part of an institutional apparatus that contributes to the production and expansion of the invalid social order that reproduces many forms of social injustice, oppression and destruction of ways of living in relation with nature. The opportunity is that being part of this apparatus, we are well prepared to understand its logic and internal determinants, to unveil its functioning and consequences. While doing it, we can contribute to actions that oppose its hegemony and, even, existence.
In this text, some central contributions of Paulo Freire have been highlighted. The criteria were that these ideas are central at his oevre and that they have connections with themes we usually consider in our academic work, such as organization, leadership and, evidently, teaching and learning in management schools. These ideas are also invitations for further dialogues, keeping always in mind the praxeology and the critical ethics that are at the fundament of Freire’s propositions.
Organization is so central for the praxis of liberation that, for example, Moraes and Misoczky (2018), considered that the theory of anti-dialogical and dialogical action could be understood as a theory of anti-dialogical and dialogical organization. This may not be the case, but there is certainly space for advancing in this debate and learnings. It is undeniable that there are multiple paths and interfaces to be explored in relation to the praxis of organizing for liberation.
The perspective of a dialogical ethical theory and practice of leadership is opened by Paulo Freire’s theory of dialogical action, which offers many possibilities to be followed. Some have been doing it, in different ways.
As examples, we can mention the work of Klein (2016) who, in a less politically radical way, writes about leadership as a dynamic that allows spaces for participative and collective actions to promote social justice; and the work of Darder (2016: 67), who in a more engaged way and in direct conversation with Freire’s propositions, suggests ethical qualities for the political and the personal struggle. She defines these qualities as reminders ‘of the complexity and multidimensionality of the principles and commitments that we must assume in our emancipatory quest to redefine the ways we think and practice a critical praxis of leadership in the world’.
This author is very interesting for the continuation of this dialogue, because she addresses questions related to leadership for social justice by unveiling some of the conflicts and contradictions that exist within the neoliberal contexts of North American universities with respect to institutional structures and relations of power. Her arguments can be useful to the context of many of our universities. According to her, the intersection between political and personal struggles is inevitable because the praxis of ethical leadership at the universities require a ‘profound sense of our human affiliation, the evolution of consciousness, and a reinvestment in the collective power of social movement and political encounters across our differences’. As part of this process, she adds that we should ‘become more politically vigilant in our responses to the world so that we do not fall prey to the commonplace contradictions of either neoliberalism or academic elitism, which easily betray our liberatory dreams’ (Darder, 2016: 69). It requires acknowledging that we do not exist outside the system and that none of us is free of contradictions and, at the same time, ‘the recognition that liberation, whether in the university, our communities, or the larger world, can only be enacted through a radically imaginative, hopeful, and loving political vision where neither diversity nor unity is sacrificed’. It requires that ‘we, as individuals and collective beings, face daily our deeply conditioned fear of freedom and dare to be powerful together’ (Darder, 2016: 70).
A third central contribution relates to the formation of critical consciousness in the educative process. It is evident that we cannot transfer political consciousness or the commitment to action. Therefore, the ethics of dialogue and the awaken of solidarity are indispensable parts of the pedagogical praxis. In another reflection, Darder (2014) emphasizes that the communal and the individual have ‘a field of sovereignty that is brought to bear in the forging of critical consciousness’ (p. 23). As Freire (1982) indicates, the ethical person who makes a radical option does not deny the right to choose nor imposes that choice upon another. This kind of caution is extremely important to keep in mind, especially in the context of management schools, in which most of the students will tend to be politically defined by the process of cultural invasion and, sometimes, even resistant to any critical approach. It does not mean that in our position as educators, we can abdicate of problematizing and alerting to the meaning and consequences of choices that contradict the universal material ethical principle of producing and reproducing life in community as a universal principle. On the contrary, dialogue is not an end in itself; dialogue is an ethical instrument at the centre of a liberating education.
This is not a conclusive contribution; it is an invitation to future dialogues that embrace what Paulo Freire’s ideas represent in terms of theoretical proposals and political aspirations.
