2023-1 International Circulation and Resignification of the Work, Methods, and Practices of Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire seen by Renato Aroeira, 19/09/2021

Image published on the artist’s social networks, reproduction authorized by him.
Editors
Mélanie Toulhoat, Casa de Velázquez - École des hautes études hispaniques et ibériques (France)
Débora Dias, CHAM - NOVA FCSH (Portugal)
On the centenary of the birth of Paulo Freire (1921-1997), the year 2021 has seen a proliferation of publications, documentaries, and reflections on the contemporaneity of the emancipatory educational practices developed by the Brazilian pedagogue during the second twentieth century. In the Brazilian context of today, his flagship works, such as “Ação Cultural para a Liberdade e OutrosEscritos” (Freire 1979), “Pedagogia da autonomia” (Freire 1996) or “Pedagogia do Oprimido” (Freire1974), have a particular resonance. The current debates also propose to analyse in depth and in a renewed way all the methods and practices worked by Freire and his collaborating teams: horizontal and popular education, emancipatory pedagogy, participatory communication, cooperation, development, adult literacy, community work, decolonization of education, fight against racial, social, economic, and cultural oppression and inequalities.
Brazilian godfather of education since 2012, former secretary of education at the São Paulo City Hall from 1989 to 1991 (Souza Franco2014), Freire is both greatly admired and brutally rejected by his detractors, who accuse him of being one of the reasons - if not the main reason - for the "decadence" of the educational system in Brazil. His work, methods and pedagogical practices have been the subject of numerous analyses from the educational sciences, as well as from the associative circles constituting the popular education networks. That said, they remain largely untouched as objects of human and social sciences: there is no international and transdisciplinary synthesis devoted to their scope, their reception and reappropriation. However, in his book on Freire’s literacy methods during the Cold War (Kirkendall 2010), the historian Andrew Kirkendall shows the importance of the educator as a historical actor of global significance, highlighting the possibilities of adapting his practices in various contexts during the second half of the 20th century.
Born in 1921 in Recife, Paulo Freire saw his middle-class family lose its income because of the 1929 crisis and move to Jaboatão dos Guararapes when he was eleven. During the 1930s and 1940s, he attended high school and pre-university courses on a scholarship, and later became a teacher under Pernambuco Governor Miguel Arrães. As the first director of the University of Recife’s university extension program, he carried out pioneering literacy work in the small town of Angicos, using educational methods centred on the reality and daily life of the learners. Imprisoned and forced into exile after the military coup of 1964, Paulo Freire went to Bolivia, Chile, and the United States. In 1971, he was welcomed by the World Council of Churches in Geneva, where he founded the Institute for Cultural Action (IDAC) with other Brazilian exiles. During the 1970s, his team participated in popular education projects in various contexts, from Italian workers to the Swiss women’s movement, to Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde.
In 1971, Freire travelled to Zambia and Tanzania as part of missions for the World Council of Churches. After working with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the independence leader and Tanzanian president from 1964 to 1985, Freire and his team began working with the new Minister of Education in Guinea-Bissau, Mário Cabral, in 1975. Researcher Curry Malott recently analysed the inspiration and influences Freire encountered in the work of Amilcar Cabral (Malott 2021), co-founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in 1956 and a leading figure in the 1963-1974 liberation war against the colonial power. Although Freire never met Amilcar Cabral, who was assassinated on January 20, 1973, the Brazilian educator found in Cabral’s work many sources of inspiration for his various projects of emancipation through literacy. This influence of Cabral, a great thinker, theorist, and actor of national liberation, is a fundamental issue for understanding the militant circulations within the decolonial struggles of Lusotopia, in which the work of literacy and popular education led by Paulo Freire was fully inserted. On the other hand, Freire contributed, by working jointly with national teams, to the creation of educational and pedagogical models whose vocation was indeed the decolonization of minds and national reconstruction.
This thematic dossier of Lusotopie invites us to think in a multidisciplinary way about the circulations, the reappropriations and the evolutions of Paulo Freire’s work and pedagogical methods from the 1960s until the end of the 20th century, within and outside of the “Lusophone” space. The permanent links between literacy, popular education and conscientization, pillars of the various experiences developed since his entry at the University of Recife, will be questioned and considered as many elements as possible of transversal reflection. Open to cross-views and comparative approaches, this issue wishes to lay the groundwork for a reflection stemming from the disciplinary traditions of cultural, political, and social history, particularly post-colonial, but also from the sciences of education and the anthropology of literacy. The aim is to situate Paulo Freire, his work, methods, and projects, as well as the action and historical scope of a group of partners and collaborators, as international actors, and emancipatory practices, reinvented and questioned according to the context of application. Here is a non-exhaustive list of thematic axes that can structure the articles:
-
Popular education, youth, and adult literacy: historical and anthropological approaches
-
Latin American dictatorships and exiles; African decolonization’s: militant and revolutionary circulations from the "Souths"
-
Progressive Catholicism and Liberation theology: a pedagogy of development?
-
Linguistic and international stakes of emancipatory educational practices
-
History, memories, and contemporary legacies of pedagogies of the oppressed in the Portuguese-speaking world
Abstracts for articles (500 words) must be sent at the latest by 15 Abril 2022 to: melanie.toulhoat.2020@gmail.com, paolovittoria10@gmail.com, lusotopie@gmail.com. After acceptance of the abstracts (end of May), complete articles are expected by July 17, 2022. Lusotopie publishes articles in French, Portuguese and English.
Some of Paulo Freire's works
Freire, P. 1979, Ação cultural para a Liberdade e outros escritos, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra.
Freire, P. 1978, Cartas a Guiné-Bissau, Lisboa, Moraes Editores.
Freire, P. 1969, ¿Extensión o Comunicación? Sobre los profesionales y el conocimiento en el (no) diálogo de saberes, Santiago, Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agrária.
Freire, P. 1996, Pedagogia da Autonomia, São Paulo, Paz e Terra.
Freire, P. 1970, Pedagogia del Oprimido, Montevideo, Tierra Nueva.
Freire, P. 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, Herder and Herder.
Freire, P. 1974, Pedagogia do Oprimido, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra.
Freire, P., Bodipo-Malumba, E. I., Cone, J. H. & Assmann, H. 1974, Teologíanegra: teología de la Liberación. Salamanque, Ediciones Sígueme.
Freire, P., Darcy de Oliveira, M., Darcy de Oliveira R. & Ceccon, C. 1980, Vivendo e Aprendendo. Experiências do IDAC em educação popular, São Paulo,Editora Brasiliense.
Short bibliography
Dumont, J. & Toulhoat, M. « Paulo Freire (1921-1997): Circulations et réinventions transatlantiques de la pédagogie des opprimé(e)s », 2022 (forthcoming), https://www.transatlantic-cultures.org.
Haddad, S. 2019, O Educador. Um perfil de Paulo Freire, São Paulo, Todavia.
Kirkendall, A. 2010, Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press.
Kirylo, J. D. 2011, « The Exile Years (1964-1980) », Counterpoints, vol. 385 « Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife »: 59-90.
Malott, C. 2021, « How Amílcar Cabral shaped Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy », New Frame, 26/08/2021, [online: https://www.newframe.com/how-amilcar-cabral-shaped-paulo-freires-pedagogy/]
Souza Franco, D. de 2024, « A gestão de Paulo Freire à frente da Secretaria Municipal de Educação de São Paulo (1989-1991) e suas consequências », Pro-Posições, 25 (3): 103-121.
Vittoria, P. 2011, Narrando Paulo Freire: Por uma Pedagogia do Diálogo, Rio de Janeiro, Editora UFRJ.



