Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.” — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed The protests of January 25 started out with catchy chants calling for “bread, freedom, social justice.” But soon after, bread took a backseat to democracy, freedom of speech, former regime trials and the handover of power. Sure, we all want a more just, more free and democratic Egypt, but we urgently need to get our priorities straight. At a time when our economy is suffering a great deal, it is a risky bet to think the already poor 40 percent of the population will back any uprising that doesn’t tackle economic issues and needs in the very immediate future. In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), the late influential Brazilian educator and theorist Paulo Freire explained that for a revolution to liberate the oppressed classes from the oppressor’s grip, the oppressed people need to have been truly engaged in the liberation process. He added that the oppressing class — which can be interpreted in our times as the elite or upper ruling classes — might  join the ranks of the oppressed and fight for their liberation, thus becoming convert oppressors. But for the liberation — or in Egypt’s case, revolution — to truly occur, the convert oppressors need to stop acting like saviors of the oppressed, claiming to know and be acting in the oppressed's best interests. If this doesn’t happen, it isn’t a true liberation, Freire argues, but simply a way of exchanging one oppressor with another; even if it happens with the best intentions possible. An oppressor, by Freire’s definition, doesn’t have to be a tyrant; he can simply be one who believes he knows the interest of the oppressed better than the oppressed himself. The oppressor doesn’t have to have a stick in his hand and a whip in the other — he can simply be one who believes that democracy and freedom of speech should be more important to people than bread. “[The converted oppressors] almost always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people's ability to think, to want, and to know,” wrote Freire. “Accordingly, these adherents to the people's cause constantly run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as malefic as that of the oppressors. The generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in order to justify that generosity. Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them.” For the January 25 uprising to become a truly liberating revolution against an oppressing regime, the elite class’s ideologies need to take a backseat to the needs of classes who suffered most under the past regime. The January 25 protest itself was triggered by calls from upper and middle classes, those who might have been themselves related to Egypt’s power elite. It was for the betterment of society, yes, but how can it be a popular movement if we don’t give way to lesser elitist demands? Freire wrote that the true liberator “does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.” If the demands put forth by revolutionaries do not start representing the immediate needs of the majority of the population, this won't be a revolution at all; instead it would be an elitist movement. If the latter becomes true, the majority of the population will not associate with it, and with the belt tightening more and more, they will most certainly turn against it, if not today then tomorrow. But this is not an attack on upper classes or those related to Egypt’s power elites. I am not even claiming to know the needs and priorities of the lower economic classes or the majority of the population. But with the anniversary of the January 25 uprising coming upon us, isn’t it about time we start evaluating not our priorities, but those of the majority of the population? Are we simply changing an oppressing rule with a better-intentioned form of oppression?