Emotions in the history of Latin American popular education: constructions for a thinking-feeling pedagogy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the presence of emotions in the constitution of popular education in Latin America, thus contributing to understand popular education as a thinking-feeling practice. It starts from the assumption that emotions are also historical and cultural expressions that mark societies and their understanding of education. In the chronicles of Guaman Poma de Ayala, one can see signs of the resistance to the conquest and of the ambivalence that characterizes coloniality; in Juana Inés de la Cruz, one hears the voice of a woman who breaks the silence; in Paulo Freire, lovingness and indignation are constitutive elements of his liberating pedagogy. In history, some emotions, such as honour, lose their strength or have their meaning changed; others, such as solidarity and insurgency, appear as possibilities of transformation in new times. The study attempts to contribute to the understanding of the complex relation between rationality and emotions in education.

Keywords:

• popular education
• coloniality
• emotions
• educational theory

Notes

1. For the meaning of mística in this context see ‘The Mística of the MST’, by Plínio de Arruda Sampaio. Available at: http://www.landlessvoices.org/vieira/archive-05.phtml?ng=e&sc=3&th=42&rd=MSTICAOF657&cd=&se=0.

2. In the article ‘Siente my cerebro? Observaciones filosóficas sobre el estado de la investigación alemana en el campo de las emociones y la falta de um “lenguaje” común en las ciências de la cultura e las neurociências’, Matthias Kross (2012) analyses the current debate on research of emotions, challenging neuroscientific reductionism and calling attention to the fact that the ethical exercise of affects (ascetics) was considered, for more than two millennia, the most noble duty of a philosopher. According to him, ‘for a student of culture and a philosopher there does not appear to be any other alternative but to catalogue the multiplicity of emotional dialects’ (p. 9).

3. This does not mean that Locke was solidary or generous to the poor. In his essay on education, they do not find a place, but in another text, he leaves the following recommendation: ‘If any boy or girl, under fourteen years of age, shall be found begging out of the parish where they dwell … they shall be sent to the next working school, there to be soundly whipped and kept at work till evening, so that they may be dismissed time enough to get to their place of abode that night’. (apud Gay, 1964, p. 13).

4. He speaks specifically about Brazil, but his analysis applies with variants to all of Latin America.

5. Emotions are strongly gender-related. For instance, women’s honor is generally connected to sex, while for men other reasons count. Furthermore, restoring a woman’s honor does not lie in her hand, but is a male prerogative.

6. The book Martí & a educação (Streck, 2008b) brings a reflection on other elements, such as rebelliousness, freedom and love.

7. See more about this in Mignolo (2010). This is not the defense of a cultural relativism, but a matter of transforming this very plurality into a universal project. In his words: ‘What is needed is a de-colonial overturn and, on the basis of it, horizons of life that are pluriversal rather than universal. That is, life horizons based on pluriversality as a universal project’ (p. 113).

8. Available at: http://dept.sfcollege.edu/HFL/hum2461/pdfs/sjicAnswer.pdf.

9. The discussion of this topic in modern sociology tends to limit itself to the field of religion, which, according to Sell and Brüseke (2006, p. 151), implied a thematic specialization, but it ‘stifled the “critical” dimension of the topic of mística as a privileged locus to think, based on the “other” of reason, about the “condition” and “contradictions” of the rationalized present day modernity’. Medieval mística, of which Meister Eckhart was an exponent, could be seen as a revolt against the theological rationalization of scholastics. In the words of Meister Eckhart himself: ‘The proper work of human being is to love and know. Now the question is: Wherein does blessedness lie most of all? Some masters have said it lies in loving, some say that it lies in knowing: others say it lies in loving and knowing, and they say better. But we say it lies neither in loving nor in knowing: for there is something in the soul from which both knowledge and love flow: but it does not itself love or know in the way the powers of the soul do. Whoever knows this, knows the seat of blessedness. This has neither before nor after, nor is it expecting anything to come, for it can neither gain nor lose’ (Eckart, 2004, p. 37 [available at: books.google.com.br/books?isbn=1456600990]).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danilo R. Streck

Danilo R. Streck did his PhD in Education at Rutgers University. He is a professor at the Graduate School of Education of the UNISINOS University (Brazil). His latest research projects focus on popular education, Latin American pedagogy, pedagogical mediations in participatory social processes and participatory research methodologies. He is the author of A New Social Contract in a Latin American Educational Context (Palgrave/McMillan), co-editor of Paulo Freire Encyclopedia (Rowman & Littlefied) and editor in chief of the International Journal of Action Research. He is a visiting scholar at the Latin American Center, UCLA, and at Max Plank Institute for Human Development in Berlin.