A quote to chew over

[Leithlurker]

?Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people?they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.?
Paulo Frierie "Pedagogy of the oppressed"

I don't know how to put this, so bear with me and please don't take this as a criticism: but I do not understand what all these threads starting with quotations are meant to be for? Is it a meme I don't get?

I love hearing interesting quotations and I love discussing different writers' opinions, but I can't make out sort of response you're looking for when you just put a quotation in a post.

Sorry if I am being slow on the uptake.

I think your right LRD, I guess I was joining in with a trend that has been going on for a while now, normally it contains something fairly controversial and the OP sits back and enjoys the spectacle for a while. In a moment of sillyness I thought I would try it, I regret that now.

Do you want to discuss the quote or should I ask MN to pull it?

If you would like I will say that, Freire has not just been one of my most often used source of inspiration, but in the fierld of education that I work in he has informed my practice and my philosophy. He was very interested in woman rights, land rights, and upsetting the patriarchy. Working in a completely different social and political environment in south america he achieved much sometimes using the catholic church as a partner.

The main point of the quote and others I could give is that one reason we tend not to have the massive shift in social and political thinking, is that things end up with one group being deposed but another set of autocratic leaders take their place, and so on, and so on. The way to stop the cycle is to work across the boundaries, the discussion about intersectionality comes in to play here, although he would not have used that term.

I love to discuss quotations but I just didn't quite see how to when its' on its own. Thank you for explaining, that helps me a lot.

I see what you mean about oppressive leaders filling the gap left when other oppressive leaders fall, and that is sad and probably accurate. I don't get what it has to do with intersectionality though? Often both sets of oppressive leaders are from exactly the same background.

last - no worries! Sorry, it's a very teenagery term!

I still haven't Googled it, LRD - but it's already stashed away with 'trope'.

A 'meme' is something people repeat and spread around the place, like those status updates on facebook saying 'post the first sentence in the book you're reading'.

Thank you, LRD!
And it's pronounced to rhyme with 'dream', yes? Not 'same'? Or - eahven forbid! - 'dreamy' - as in 'Me! Me!'

I digress, though.

I guess these quote-led-OPs might make more sense if they had 'Discuss' tacked on the end?

I've no idea. I say it to rhyme with 'dream' but I've never thought about it and it's a word you mostly see written rather than hear said.

I've got to say 'discuss' is one of those things that drives me mad. It's like being back in school again, don't you think?

The next step would be multiple choice. Radical feminism is

a) a political ideology
b) a new kind of carrot
c) scottish slang for 'awesome'
d) I have no idea but I'm sure it's rude.

If we get to that, we're doomed.

Ooh, I know that one, it's (a)

LMIP it rhymes with 'dream'. I thought it was from Richard Dawkins.

Leith, is Friere only talking about dictators or does he mean elected leaders also?

Is it Dawkins? I admit, I steer clear of him, he annoys me. I thought it was older, but maybe not.

He uses it in 'The Blind Watchmaker', which was his first book, late 70s I think (before he got his not-God complex ) but he may well have appropriated a disused word (I think he used it to try and discuss the wider manifestations of characteristics rather than individual genes)

Well see thats what I like people exchanging information and ideas. The Doc, he is talking about all levels of society, even down to the local mother and toddlers.

LRD If intersectional practice was fully brought in to being the nature of power and power relations would change. The scary part is that their would be no need for feminism, lgbt rights, disabled rights, etc. Every one would be equal. I say that is scary becouse and here is the crossover, each group gets power from being able to how how they are diffrent and how they are worse off than others.

Of course for intersectional practice to work then society as we know it based on capatalism and consumerism would need to be done away with.

We are talking across the threads here!

But yes, I don't think that is scary but I know what you mean, it is frightening to imagine.

I do still disagree it's intersectionality that needs to be brought in, not, well, feminism. But don't think I'm saying that because I don't follow the argument. I think I just see power structures as more rigidly hierarchical than you do, maybe?

I rather like the quotation. I've always found that kind of leadership infantilises people. It can also reinforce discrimination, since the personality cult encourages apostolic succession as everyone tries to be most like the leader or exploits their similarity to the leader (sex, race, religion, class, educational background or whatever it might be).

For what it's worth, Frierie's work was used as the basis for domestic violence offender re-education programmes (AKA The Duluth model - the most globally used model)