Understanding colonialism and fostering a decolonizing emancipatory education through Paulo Freire

Abstract

This paper, rather than providing a comprehensive discussion around Paulo Freire’s ideas, focuses on one aspect of his body of work: colonialism. The emphasis is on the ‘oppressor consciousness’ and cultural invasion (seen in its broadest context to include institutional colonialism with special reference to the traditional, modernizing and prophetic church. It also deals with the complex issue of language in postcolonial contexts, with special reference to education in Guinea Bissau and its implications for other colonial contexts.

Keywords:

• Colonialism
• oppressor consciousness
• cultural invasion
• language
• creole
• Church

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Most recently his work has been adopted with regard to analyses of literary classics (Roberts, 2010). We might shortly be speaking of a Freirean literary lens in the same way that we speak of a Derridean or Foucaultian lens. It has also been availed of for discussions around museum education (Mayo, 2004).

2 There are those who ask: decolonising into what? This is similar to the somewhat hackneyed: transform into what? Decolonising is an ongoing process. You never arrive. It is, in Freire's sense, a question of continuous anuncio e denuncio. As a person born into a country, Malta, and a people, Maltese, with long histories of colonisation and which received its formal independence in 1964, the struggles to decolonize have been continual in terms of formally transforming its structures into republican ones from a UK monarchical one and for challenging the colonial mindset which can prove deeply anchored. Decolonising means not harkening back to some romanticised golden ‘precolonial’ age (Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere gestured in this direction when he romanticised pre-colonial African society as one large brotherhood/sisterhood, for which he was roundly criticised by African historians) but striving for dignified living as persons. It would entail becoming less submissive to foreign diktats serving neo-colonial interests, less deferent to foreign powers, less accepting of the colonial corporate global elite and their ‘world order’ (imagined or otherwise), less taken in by nationalistic rhetoric (very challenging as a contradiction in times of self-determination) and more supportive of solidarity concerns with the fellow colonised ‘Wretched of the earth and seas’ ( e.g. migrants, victims of colonial geographical imbalances). This is the kind of agency I am talking about. It is an agency whereby we look forward not backward. It is not something akin to the German idealist philosophy mindset of looking back to an almost mythical golden age of Goethe. It is something that encourages us to look forward to a revitalised future…we make the decolonised road by walking: se hace camino descolonizadora andar.

3 One ought to avoid binaries here as the two often intersect. For example, people avail themselves of the tools of hegemonic globalisation (e.g. the internet) to get different activists interacting in the build up to a street protest or world social forum, to provide two examples. It is also present in the concomitant consumer culture ideology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Mayo

Peter Mayo is Professor and UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education. He is a founding editor of the journal Postcolonial Directions in Education and is editor of the international adult education journal, Convergence. He has produced 24 books the latest being Critical Education in International Perspective (co-authored with P. Vittoria) for Bloomsbury Academic.