Utopia as Critical Method: Paulo Freire 20 Years After His Passing

• In Event: 18.072 - Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: 18.072-11 - Exploring Freire's Dimensions

Abstract

It has been 20 years since Paulo Freire’s death in 1997. During this period of time his work has survived and even flourished in North America and around the world. In this paper, I discuss some of the reasons for Freire’s work has sustained and increased in importance in this age of increasing violence, xenophobia, cultural erasure and authoritarianism and standardization in schools and beyond in a prevailing culture of narcissism. In response to these prevailing conditions I explore Freire’s view of critical utopian hope as “denouncing how we are living and announcing how we could live” (Freire, 2004, p. 105).

Author

• Robert Lewis Lake, Georgia Southern University