Paulo Freire: A Philosophical Biography

297 Pages·2021·2.781 MB·English

by  Walter Omar Kohan

Paulo Freire
Also available from Bloomsbury
Education for Critical Consciousness, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy in Process, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of Hope, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of the Heart, Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, edited by James D. Kirylo
The Student Guide to Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, Antonia Darder
Paulo Freire
A Philosophical Biography
Walter Omar Kohan
Translated by
Jason Wozniak and Samuel D. Rocha
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Originally published in Portuguese by Editora Vestígio, an imprint of Grupo Autêntica,
under the title Paulo Freire mais do que nunca: uma biografia filosófica (2019).
First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Walter Omar Kohan and Bloomsbury, 2021
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To Paulo Freire,
To his life of equality, love, errantry, and childhood;
And to the ragged, torn, and threadbare lives who, in it,
Encounter joy and hope.

Contents
Foreword viii
Acknowledgments xiii
A Note on the English Translation xv
Introduction: Beginnings and Senses of a Reading 1
1 Life 17
2 Equality 43
3 Love 67
4 Errantry 93
5 Childhood 113
Epilogue 151
Appendices 175
References 257
Index 269
Foreword
I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and
my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which
it will be easier to love.
Paulo Freire1
We find ourselves in the midst of an authoritarian climate of neoliberal
fascism,2 where progressive educators around the world are facing
tremendous difficulties in keeping alive Paulo Freire’s dreams for a
more just and loving world. It is in this very contentious political
moment that Walter Omar Kohan’s biography of Freire is published
with a clear and deliberate significance: Freire is needed more than ever.
The book arrives at a historical moment—strange times, according to
Kohan—when in Freire’s own beloved Brazil, a right-wing reactionary
government seeks to disavow the impact of his educational philosophy,
renounce his socialist legacy, and erase his intellectual contribution to
an education for freedom and equality. Yet, in the face of the political
arrogance and neoliberal logic of greed and profit that inform this
outlandish disregard for liberatory knowledge, we are graced with the
intellectual force of this lovely tribute to Paulo Freire’s life and works.
As might be expected from a Brazilian critical education philosopher,
Kohan openly unpacks the dialectical tensions that undergird any
volume that emerges from translation. He correctly reminds us that the
question of translation was a meaningful one to Freire’s own intellectual
biography. It is quite easy for those who are monolingual English-
speakers to miss or dismiss the significance of this issue. In light of this,
1 See: Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (thirtieth anniversary edition). New
York: Continuum (40).
2 See: https :/ /ca mri .a c .uk/ blog/ Artic les /h enry- a -gir oux -a nd -th e -cul ture- of -ne olibe ral -f
ascis m/.
Foreword ix
Kohan’s candid discussion reminds us of the hegemonic struggles tied
to language that were so important to Freire’s work as a sociolinguist
and scholar of literacy. Hence, as Kohan speaks to the struggle he
faced with the translation of the title of this book, I am reminded of
the epistemological differences that persist between the North and the
South in how we conceptualize and express, through the medium of our
languages, our diverse readings of the world. A language that permits
us to say, for example, Paulo Freire Mais do que Nunca (Paulo Freire,
More than Ever/Never) without sense of contradiction or tension also
points to differences in cultural sensibilities about our human nature,
our relationship with time and space, and our interrelationships within
the world, expressed through the cultural rhythms, tones, sounds, and
arrangement of words.
As may be correctly surmised, the struggle of translation Kohan
raises early in the text is a profoundly political question—a question
that persists, given the linguistic tensions that have existed historically
between the colonized and the colonizer. As it is with this book, the
question of translation is evident in Freire’s Under the Shade of the
Mango Tree, whose English translation is Pedagogy of the Heart. Lost is
an understanding of the mango tree as both an organic and a cultural
metaphor from which Freire could ponder and unveil reflections on a
variety of themes. For those of us whose epistemological sensibilities
are more deeply anchored in the South, something powerful is lost in
translation, a different cultural essence, sensibility, and way of knowing
the world—one that valiantly speaks to the pain and suffering that robs
from the oppressed their rightful time, space, and place to be truly free.
It is impressive to see how Kohan courageously leaps across
typical approaches to reading Freire, by diving deeply into a sea
of consciousness that takes us on a rich intellectual journey into
Freire’s life. Rather than simply remaining on the surface of Freirean
thought, Kohan reinvigorates Freire’s ideas through enacting curiosity,
imagination, and playfulness, in his critical pedagogical process of
entering into dynamic conversation with Paulo Freire’s writings and
lectures, as well as interviews with family and comrades. Through his