Rhetorical Constructions: Dialogue and Commitment

Abstract

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire introduces the concept of praxis, by which he signifies the two dimensions of authentic discourse, that of reflection and that of action, the process of naming reality and the process of changing reality. Reflection alone, he argues, is insufficient because it is mere verbalism, empty word . . . which cannot denounce the Action alone is similarly inadequate, mere activism, where the energy for choosing exists apart from critical awareness and direction. In true naming always entails transformation because the process of naming renders the world problematic, an object within history, a choice from among possible choices and therefore a limitation to be challenged. At the same time, action, the process of transforming, always entails a new naming because the emergence of reality is only possible through a struggle to articulate. As expression is achieved, it permits the conscious scrutiny that induces occasions and conditions of further transforming. The ultimate motive for any transformation is, according to Freire, the need to be more fully human, the need to participate more completely and more freely in the world. The instrument of transforming is dialogue, where competing representations of reality dynamically challenge each other to compose alternative forms of action. In the absence of dialogue, with the erasure of anyone's word, with the prohibition of critical inquiry, with the maintenance of dominating conditions, however subtly validated as necessity, tradition, or evolution, the possibility of becoming more fully human is curtailed. Erosion of that possibility constitutes the inauthentic discourse-the stagnant reality-of oppression (60 ff.). Freire has applied his concept of praxis with dramatic results to the circumstances of teachers and students in classrooms concerned with literacy, helping the disenfranchised in particular to assert their power to name and transform the world. I want to apply the concept here as well, but as a kind of probe with which to examine some philosophical issues that teaching and thinking about teaching regularly bring to mind: first, the relationship between intellectual argument (reflection) and teaching practice (action); second, the conflict between dialogue (the free, collective examination of choices) and commitment (the decision to act); third, the ideological perversion that attends a privileging of