Paulo Freire's relevance 100 years on

Abstract

This paper pays tribute to Paulo Freire a hundred years after his birth in September 1921. It outlines a global scenario against which his ideas and insights can be measured: Neoliberalism, a global pandemic, fake news, a still Darwinian world at the heart of a North-South imperial politics, a culture of militarisation, a sense of fatalism where the present highlights the limits of what is possible, the ideology of ideological death and planetary devastation leading to the ever presence of people striving to move from South to South and South to North to eke out a living still, for many, on the margins of society. Freire's never ending politics of hope and the urge to dream the possible dream rooted in one's existential situation, his emphasis on a politics of solidarity and from below through social movements and the ever important pedagogy of the question, problematization, constitute an antidote to what is awry in this ‘grand and terrible world'. Praxis (action resulting from reflection on previous action), to be distinguished from mere practice (prassi in Italian - habitual behaviour) and dialectical thinking, lie at the heart of Freire's antidote in these times.