Paulo Freire and the political revolution of the decolonial thinking

Abstract

We argue in this essay that Paulo Freire's work can be read as a decolonial text and that progressive educators must radically engage in transgressing boundaries to reconstruct Freire's work in the specificity of its historical and political context. This means highlighting the problematic of a colonization policy situated in the privilege and power of the West to discuss how the ideological issue of such a position can propose a distorted reading of Freire's work. At the same time, we emphasize that Freire becomes a revolutionary frontier-crosser engaged in productive dialogue with the authors of his time, producing a critical work in which dominant social relations, ideologies, and practices that erase the specificity of colonized peoples' voices can be challenged and overcome. In his fight for freedom, the author makes education and culture central elements for politics and proposes utopian ideas capable of breaking with conservative tradition and restoring hope in the ability of human beings to transform reality and rewrite the story.