The Body and Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy

• In Event: Critical Pedagogy, the Body, and the Politics of Data

Abstract

Freire left behind a legacy that speaks passionately to the relationship of the body to emancipatory forms of education. This encompasses a pedagogical perspective that remains fully cognizant of the primacy of the body in the construction of knowledge. Freire’s philosophical renderings are anchored to an understanding of teachers and students as material beings and thus call for a pedagogical process informed by a humanizing ethos of the body to support reflection, dialogue, and solidarity, as we labor for the common good. As teachers and students participate more fully in the dialogical process of communal learning, the materiality of their bodies also must be understood as rightful allies in the formation and expression of collective consciousness. Of this Freire (1983) said, “true education incarnates the permanent search of people together with others for their becoming fully human in the world in which they exist” (96). With these ideas in mind, this paper considers some of the salient ways in which the body is made central to Freirean thought.

Author

• Antonia Darder