Telling the World about oneself in Freirean Literature: the human right to speech

ABSTRACT

Telling the world about oneself, in the full meaning of being and acting, is one of Paulo Freire’s legacy to the Education. Well, beyond the concrete gesture of his pedagogy, the written speech has denounced negligence and has powered resistance and liberation attitudes. In this manner, reflecting about the right of speech as human right is this text’s purpose. The methodology uses bibliographical search, discussing human rights singularity at the books: Pedagogia do Oprimido, Pedagogia da Esperança, and others opus, in dialog with human rights fundaments. The human right to speech marks the singularity of Freire’s opus and pedagogy, that talks about oneself and themselves.

Keywords
Paulo Freire; Right to Speech; Human Rights

RESUMO

Dizer ao mundo de si, no sentido pleno do ser, do estar e do agir, constitui-se em um dos legados de Paulo Freire para a Educação. Ora, para além do gesto concreto de sua pedagogia, a palavra escrita denunciou negligências e empoderou atitudes de resistência e libertação. Nesse sentido, refletir sobre o direito à palavra como direito humano é o propósito desse texto. A metodologia utiliza-se da pesquisa bibliográfica, problematizando a singularidade dos direitos humanos nos livros: Pedagogia do Oprimido, Pedagogia da Esperança, entre outras obras, em diálogo com os fundamentos dos direitos humanos. O direito humano à palavra marca a singularidade da obra e pedagogia freireanas, que dizem ao mundo sobre si e sobre o outro.

Palavras-chave
Paulo Freire; Direito à Palavra; Direitos Humanos

Introduction

Among the legacies of the 21 years of military dictatorship (1964-1985), the censorship of the media and art stand out, violating the right to speech and freedom of thought; the spread of fear through political persecution and torture practices; the imposition of a culture of silence and repression, among other forms of violation committed during this period. They constitute historical facts to represent, in the Freire’s sense, the “edge-situations”, “[...] that present themselves to men as if they were historic, overwhelming determinants, in face that they have no alternative but to adapt” (Freire, 2011, p. 130).

According to Freire (2011), “edge-situations” “contain” the motivations for their own overcoming, because, in adverse contexts, the subject will do justice to the human capacity to critically counteract situations that put him on the edge of his dignity, to overcome him or perhaps transform him. At that moment, he will assume the role of facing the limit situations imposed, elaborating the “unprecedented viable”.

In this perspective and regarding the arbitrary conjuncture of the military regime, the mobilizations of students, teachers, civil society, media, movements and social groups against the barbarities of that period and in defense of democracy configured the unprecedented viable resistance to the dictatorship. It is understood as people/groups assumed their status as historical subjects and, with a lot of struggles, transformed the limit situations of authoritarianism in the unheard-of-feasible of democracy.

This singularity materialized in the transformation of dictatorial extreme situations in the unprecedented viable of democracy and resistance, is inscribed and inserted in the relation of historical authorship in the world as a collective and human capacity for writing and (re)writing of oneself and of other subjects. It is a dynamic and reflective action that (re)thinking the reality, its problems and exclusions implies a dialogical movement of looking at oneself without disregarding the look at the other. It is, therefore, a concrete attitude of writing about oneself that happens collectively, since “to exist, humanly, is to pronounce the world, is to modify it” (Freire, 2011, p. 108), in a dialogical way in communion with other subjects.

Being this other the representation of the social collective and its conjunctures, the writing about oneself is crossed by the writing of the other, and, in this (re)writing process, “telling the world about oneself” means placing oneself in the world to enjoy of the human right to be people. It is also assuming himself as a historical subject capable of forming and transforming himself and the surrounding realities.

Thus, “telling the world about oneself” is a (re)writing about oneself intertwined in dialogicity with the other subjects, that the right to speech is, above all, a human right, since when pronouncing it, they problematize contexts and situations that the pronunciation becomes a denunciation, because “saying the speech” is not being silent in the face of injustices and inequalities. It is projecting himself as a subject who thinks, rethinks, transforms. It is (re)doing himself in a dialogic and interactive way in everyday relationships (social, cultural, political, economic, anthropological, educational, among other possibilities); so that “telling the world about oneself” comprises Freire’s assumption of “telling the world to transform it”.

In this sense, telling the world about oneself communicates with the “[...] epistemological vocation of human beings to want to be more” (Freire, 2011, p. 95), to be “[...] more citizens, more subjects of rights” (Carbonari, 2007, p. 177), more protagonist, more capable of transforming and transforming. It is to fight for the realization of everyone rights, so, by “telling the world about oneself”, the effective exercise of the right to speech is put into practice as a human right that is transformed in the affirmation and realization of the subject’s historicity.

A political act, “telling the world about oneself” does not end when the right to speech happens, quite the contrary, it involves a dynamic process of the subject’s interaction with and at the place he occupies (or intends to occupy), which is expressed in the ways of being, perceiving himself and intervening in the context that surrounds him (or beyond him). This place is not just geographical, social or political, it is, above all, historical and human. There is no arrogance in this act, which is designed to understand and reflect on himself, the other and reality, but the realization of a non-negotiable human right.

Therefore, the right to speech (as a way of telling the world about oneself and others) is intertwined with the realization/effectiveness of other rights: the right to be generated, the right to be born, to be fed, to be a child , the right to play, to go to school, to become literate, the right to education, health, housing, a dignified life, the environment, sustainability, memory, justice, truth, freedom, happiness, respect, leisure, rest and also struggle, among many other rights that converge to the writing about oneself, in Freire’s sense of being more.

But how will the human vocation of being more be realized if human rights are neglected, attacked or impeded? How to pronounce, to claim or rebuild your historical place if the subject who has the right to speech and, with that, the power to pronounce (and denounce), is not capable of reading the world in a critical and dialogical way? Or being able to read reality critically, any rights are denied and/or the Democratic State of Law is at risk?

It is precisely this democracy, built in the clash of resistance by groups, individuals and civil, unions and religious movements, signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which is covertly threatened by anti-democratic political actions and attitudes, by postures that hurt or disrespect principles of citizenship, freedom and human dignity. This situation contributes to the deconstruction of the right to speech, to silence and to the minimization of the right of being more.

Adding to this situation, about Higher Education, the budgetary funds contingency, practiced more fiercely at Bolsonaro’s Government (2019 to 2022), harmed the functioning of higher education courses, as well as the activities of teaching, research and extension. This situation affected not only the functioning of public university institutions, but also the development of research and, consequently, Freire’s act of pronouncing the world as a path to social transformation. Therefore, how to promote autonomy, freedom of management and production of scientific knowledge when federal public institutions faced resource constraints?

As if the imminent risk of the anti-democratic crisis experienced by Bolsonaro’s Government was not enough, with the withdrawal/reduction of social rights through labor and social security reforms, among other forms of reduction/retaliation of social rights, such as cuts in financial resources, budget freezes directed mainly to the Education, Health and Citizenship Folders, the shocks of the world crisis resulting from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic were experienced. This adversity aggravated social inequality and the ineffectiveness of collective guarantees of fundamental rights once achieved.

Such events weaken the Brazilian democratic experience, which makes the critical-reflective element of Freire’s pedagogy increasingly necessary. This pedagogical element, saying the speech, the ability to (re)write about oneself and of the other, as a human right to leverage other rights, must be strengthened in all scenarios, both democratic and adverse to democracy. It is considered that, from this (re)cognition, the conditions will be reached for the democratic movement realization of realities and defense of human dignity and citizenship.

For Paulo Freire, the human dignity, defended in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), necessarily passes through the domain of reading and writing”. (Clarindo; Reindeer, 2021, p. 2). Thus, for the educator, the reading act transcends the technique because it implies reading the world to act and/or transform it; and the act of writing, in addition to involving literacy as a way of materializing citizenship, concerns the processes of writing about oneself as a movement of liberation and/or (re)construction of life (Freire, 2011).

Having reading and writing as affirmative assumptions for valuing human dignity implies understanding education in the broad sense of a political act, aimed at the formation of the subject “[...] and as a fundamental instrument for guaranteeing human dignity” (Silva, 2021, p. 06). Education must be understood as a fundamental instrument, but not the only one, because, for human dignity to be realized, guaranteeing the right to education (or education as a political act) is not enough. It requires the realization of other rights, since it is not enough to have access to education (even if this education exercises its critical functionality as a political act), if the rights to health, work, leisure, food, freedom (and other rights) are being neglected.

In this sense, when we contextualize article 1 of the UDHR, of 1948, which announces: “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards each other in a spirit of fraternity” (UNICEF, 1948), the question arises: are all human beings born free? Are all born in equal conditions of rights? Or is the idea of dignity perceived as a right for all, as something validated and in conditions of realization?

Now, not all people are born free, many are born in conditions of imprisonment, whether due to lack of material resources or due to social inequality (among other limiting forms). For this reason, “telling the world about oneself” means using “space” and “speech power” to make himself heard and/or to claim rights and establish himself as a historical subject, capable of pronouncing the world and building instruments of freedom.

It is for this reason that “telling the world about oneself” comprises a Freire’s attitude towards contexts that violate rights that can be configured as “borderline situations”. It is precisely when facing these situations that the individual “tells the world about himself”, that is, through the right to speech, as a collective attitude of struggle, he acts to (re)write about himself and/or of others.

And when does the right to speech suffer the retaliation of a context? However, during the military dictatorial period (1964-1985), this right was violently “revoked”, censored, along with other rights. Political persecution was imposed, using practices that violate human rights, naturalizing a culture of silence and fear. In this repressive scenario, extreme situations of the right to speech were engendered, preventing the “pronunciation of oneself”, of the action-speech, as an instrument of claim or free expression of the human being. These facts stimulated the perspective of the unprecedented, viable, as strength and resistance, and the speech became a pronunciation and denunciation of the world and for the world.

Well, by recovering the foundations of Paulo Freire’s literature, thought and pedagogy for action in society, it is just not trying to protect already conquered rights, but defending life and the deeper processes that involve human beings and their conquests; it means assuming the human capacity to develop as a historical subject who thinks, acts and transforms.

Resuming the pedagogy of oppressed and other “Freire’s pedagogies”, such as the pedagogy of hope and indignation, is to involve the processes of writing about oneself or rewriting of the human being and expand them beyond the legally established formal guarantees. It means promoting and strengthening the ways of being in the world, to have and exercise the right to be heard and to have a voice.

The right to speech in Freire’s sense of writing about oneself is configured as a human right to invoke other rights. Therefore, it is interesting to reflect on the right to speech presented in Paulo Freire’s works, from the perspective of human rights, to discuss some aspects of the founding elements of Freire’s thought, pedagogy and practice and their intersections with human rights.

In this sense, among the analyzed works, we highlight Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy of Hope and Pedagogy of Indignation, in a dialogic perspective with human rights, in scholars such as Carbonari (2007), Comparato (2008) and Piovesan (2005).

The Human Right to Speech in Freire’s Works: why ‘telling the world about oneself’ is a matter of human rights

What is the Freire’s meaning of saying the speech?

The speech fight, action and transformation translate well the meaning that it manifests in Paulo Freire’s works. Loaded with strength and meaning, it announces different categories to be reflected on, thinking about the relationship between subjects and the world that surrounds them. Speech that the announcement of freedom and the denunciation of oppression become integral parts, in communication, awakening critical thinking about the various problems that involve subjects, from the perspective of the collective: the problem of hunger, processes of violence, dehumanization, exploitation, oppression, the need for a liberating praxis education. According to Freire, the speech becomes a dialogue and it is only through the bias of dialogicity that Education will constitute a practice of freedom.

Produced on the strength of his experience in exile, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the result of Freire’s reflection, which makes it a analyzes set about the processes of education and educational practices. He resumes the looking at the subject’s condition who, in the process of awareness, are afraid of freedom and, therefore, afraid of a liberating education. The fear of critical conscience will denounce what is inscribed behind this attitude, the denied vocation for humanization. Having his own humanization denied, the subject experiences injustice, the oppressor’s violence, exploitation and oppression. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed will then be built within the search scope for humanization of both, the oppressed and the oppressor, a pedagogical option that starts from the oppressed and, according to Freire,

[…] it must be forged with him and not for him, as men or peoples, in the incessant struggle to recover their humanity. Pedagogy that makes oppression, and its causes, the object of reflection by the oppressed, which will result in his necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation, that this pedagogy will be made and remade

(Freire, 2020a, p. 20).

In this perspective, guaranteeing the right to speech that transforms and frees the subjects is to guarantee the right to “tell the world about oneself”, because “[...] saying the speech is not the privilege of some men, but the right of all men” (Freire, 2020a, p. 109). The speech as a mediator of the human condition of being dialogic is made from two dimensions:

Action and reflection, in such a solidary way, in such a radical interaction that, sacrificed even in part, one of them immediately feels the other. There is no true speech that is not praxis. Hence, the true speech is to transform the world

(Freire, 2020a, p. 109).

In this sense, the speech that transforms the world goes through the construction of the own human rights and rescues the subject who tells the world about himself as a subject with rights, since human rights reflect an axiological construct based on a symbolic space of struggle and social action. This space of social struggle woven by the speech, according to Freire, leads us to think about the relationship and dimension of the speech as a category of power, that speaking is not just a symbol, but necessarily a political act of historical action by the subject in the reality transformation.

Reflecting on the right to speech during the human civilization construction, we faced the historical denial of this right to those considered subordinates and subjects, or regarded as second-class humans, or no representative category: slaves, black slaves, servants, women, the illiterate, the poor, those who, in Freire’s language, are called oppressed. In this sense, the right to speech is a conquest historically forged, by a specific public, as it belongs to white and wealthy gentlemen, who, holding material power, also held (hold?) the speech power. And not only as an own trade, but by status quo, dictating the social order, customs, ideology, worldview perspective from the landlord’s logic, leaving to the “subjects” only to repeat, obey and do not question the order of the established discourse. This naturalized oppression process of the right to speech becomes a problem of humanization and lack of rights. This conquest, for the oppressed, has been suffered; struggles have been fought. Educating to free human beings from their chains is an urgent and irrefutable action!

In the educational experience with Freire’s categories, it was possible for the undergraduates to say the speech, both in classes and in the development of extension and teaching projects, that education and human rights were articulated and the speech flowed as a pronunciation and as a denunciation of arbitrariness or disrespect for rights. Moments of reflection beyond the oppression feeling that involved many students, deconstructing daily experiences of subjection, enabled new perspectives and interpretations, new actions and knowledge, opening space for the beginning of an empowerment and humanization process, for a pedagogy as a practice of freedom. Saying the word and building environments for reflection on oneself and others, reality and the relationships that are processed in it, contributed to everyone telling the world about themselves. And, in this interactive space, at 2019, in a classroom at the Federal University of Paraíba, Campus I, João Pessoa, a report was presented by a Pedagogy Course graduate, which marked everyone and revealed that the oppressor crosses in many ways, in relation to the oppressed: the student reported the disrespect to Municipal Law n. 1.824/2013, of João Pessoa, when her wife, assuming her right, asked to stop out of the stopping point, because it was latter than 10 pm, and she was not answered. The law in force aims to protect women and reduce violence. The student used the speech as a reality pronunciation and denunciation, because, even in the face of protective legislation, women continue to suffer risks and disrespect, naturalizing the process of oppression. Her speech, pregnant with life, denounced the situation of violence still experienced daily, as an attempt to improve the world and as an intervention possibility. In these experiences, education was experienced as a political act, “[...] democratic education based on respect for the student, his language, his cultural class identity, the theoretical explanation of the education defense that unveils, that unveils, which challenges; […]” (Freire; Mendonça, 2021, p. 115).

Thinking about the oppressor/oppressed’s categories and their relationship with the speech power and the process of humanization is, according to Freire’s thought, thinking “[...] around man and men as beings in the world and with the world and around what and how they are being” (Freire, 2020a, p. 40) and seek the affirmation of men as subjects of decision, that “[...] a more anthropological than anthropocentric sense is reflected” (Freire, 2020a, p. 41). From this perspective, denying the right to speech is an act of violence, because it is an act that historically dehumanizes subjects, that the violence established by the oppressors generates an unjust social order.

To speak is to “tell the world about oneself”. In this exercise, the speech becomes an “[…] emancipation act, because the existence, because human, cannot be mute, silent and not even fed on false words, but fed on true speech which men transform the world” (Freire, 2020a, p. 108). If the speech is devoid of the act of announcement and denunciation, it is alienated and alienating for Freire, and, if it does not denounce the injustices of the world, it becomes empty or hollow in meaning.

In the path of Freire’s work, the speech is pregnant with meaning, stories, memories and concrete characters since it is made of the life ground, or it is, in the space of existence. It is life that makes speech, it is speech full of life. It is pregnant with everything that the subject produces, it becomes the life speech that gives life to the word and, in this sense, to reinvent the own world, to provoke transformation, to empower and to recreate the change realities.

Only by taking possession of the speech, the subjects can pronounce the world and tell the world about themselves. Therefore, the possibility of dialogue will not exist if the world pronunciation is denied to someone in detriment of others. The right to say the speech must be regained by those who have this right denied, because for Freire (2011), denying the right to speech is a dehumanizing assault since “[...] it is saying the speech that pronounces the world, men transform it, the dialogue imposes itself as the path which men gain meaning as men” (Freire, 2020a, p. 109). By the dialogue, the speech is democratized and, therefore, there will be no human right to speech without the right to democracy, considering that “[...] there are no human rights without democracy, nor democracy without human rights” (Piovesan, 2005, p. 44) and, therefore, “[…] talking, for example, about democracy and silencing the people, is a farce” (Freire, 2020a, p. 113).

As an existential requirement (Freire, 2020a), dialogue, in the Freirean conception, takes place in the encounter among subjects who, in solidarity with each other, seek to reflect on human action in the world, concerned with “the world pronunciation” (Freire, 2020a), and it is how the speech becomes, before symbols to be decoded, the possibility of reading the world. There is, therefore, in the right to speech, that dialogue takes place, the right to build human-world relations, that education takes place as a practice of freedom.

According to Paulo Freire, “[…] there is no education out of the human societies and there is no man in the void” (Freire, 2020b, p. 51). For this reason, it has fundamental importance to start from the understanding of the man is not just a being of relationships and contacts and he is not just in the world, but the man is with the world. It means to say “[…] man exists – existere – in time. He is in. He is out. He inherits. He incorporates. He modifies” (Freire, 2020b, p. 57). Man is an existence and actively participates in the production of his culture and, as a culture subject, he is a subject of rights, and cannot be treated randomly or generically.

It is from this particularity that each subject is understood as peculiar and leaving the generic and abstract world for the real and concrete world, that Freire thinks literacy in and for the world. Education, in its process of man’s literacy to act in the world, goes through the concern for the culture democratization that “[...] man is not patient of the process, who’s his only virtue is having the patience to endure the abyss between his existential experience and the content offered for learning, but its subject” (Freire, 2020b, p. 136). Thus, “[…] since the beginning, in democratic and critical practice, reading the world and reading the speech are dynamically together” (Freire, 1989, p. 19) and interconnected.

Right to Teaching the Speech: building a pedagogy of resistance

According to Freire, there is a very clear conception of someone who takes on the task of teaching the speech. The teaching-learning relationship is democratized and dialectically posited because it talks about a praxis that “[...] no one educates no one, no one educates oneself, men educate each other, mediated by the world” (Freire, 2020a, p. 95). From this perspective, there is an overcoming of the teacher as educator of the student or student of the educator, but educator-student/student-educator, that learning takes place as a dialogue; and dialectical and dialogical relationship; and in this sense, “[...] teaching requires risk, acceptance of what is new and rejection of any form of discrimination” (Freire, 1996, p. 19). From Freire’s perspective, teaching involves building a critical awareness that the educator/student is involved as parts of a single process, that cultural, economic, political, pedagogical and ethical issues are involved, as a path of humanization and personal, social freedom, structural that promotes community subjects and a popular pedagogy.

The speech as a resistance repertoire, in Freire’s work, is impregnated with intervention, it presents itself as a model for overcoming inequalities that “[...] the progressive task is to stimulate and make possible, in the most different circumstances, the capacity to intervene in the world, never its opposite, the crossing of arms in the face of challenges” (Freire, 2000, p. 28). In his writings, the speech is not neutral, but “[…] it has a clear option because it is addressed to the tattered people of the world and to those who discover themselves in it and, thus discovering themselves, with them, they suffer, but above all, with them, they fight” (Freire, 2020a, p. 10). Constructing a pedagogy of resistance, his writings, while they are filled with indignation at the world injustices, call for the subjects’ autonomy, peoples and cultures, above all, are a pedagogy of hope and to hope.

Pedagogy of hope is understood as the human right that each person has to “say about himself” and about the world, present in the speech of the worker, the peasant, the woman, the young, the still illiterate, configuring a democratic and popular education that, for Freire, has the task “[…] of enabling the popular classes to develop their language. Of language as a way of inventing citizenship” (Freire, 1992, p. 05).

In his Pedagogy of Hope: a reunion with the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire describes the perspective of his writing and says that “[...] it is such a book, written with anger, with love, without them there is no hope. A defense of tolerance, which is not to be confused with the connivance of radicalism; a critique of sectarianism, an understanding of progressive post-modernity and a rejection of neoliberal conservative” (Freire, 1992, p. 6). As a dictionary of resistance, Freire’s writing can only be thought in the context that the text made of speech pregnant with experiences and knowledge resulted from praxis are in favor of human rights, the process of liberation of the oppressed, education for construction of new empowered subjects, of democracy and citizenship. That’s why his commitment to the fight, his taste for freedom and the right to be more. In his words:

[...] our struggle, as a woman, as a man, as a black man, as a worker, as a Brazilian, North American, French or Bolivian, despite the different and important conditions of sex, color, class, culture, history that mark us, is the one that, starting from the conditioning concreteness, converges in the direction of BEING MORE, in the direction of universal objectives

(Freire, 2015, p. 260).

With this, Freire points to the need of everyone fights together, collectively, to achieve the possible dream of being more and of being subjects of rights.

Freire’s Dialogicity and Human Rights: pronouncing the speech, love and freedom

Essence of education as a practice of freedom, Freire’s dialogicity¹ is guided by the attitude/action of pronouncing the world, in the world (and about the world). It constitutes a concrete act elaborated in the daily practice of human interactions in face of oppressive situations and contexts that, in some way, diminish or limit human beings in their ontological capacity of being more.

With the dialogicity, Freire (2011, p. 107) teaches resistance is built and/or (re)elaborated in the core of relationships, in the “ground of life”, in their contexts of submission, that requires struggle, which implies reflective action in face of the oppressive situation, to perceive it, and attitude to overcome it.

This reflexive action means Freire’s dialogic praxis of action-reflection that, in face of oppressive contexts, is articulated with the human capacity to intervene in the world, after all, men are historical-social subjects in constant movement and holders of the speech power. Therefore, the right to speech, that is, the right to pronounce the world, to pronounce in the world and about the world, is a human right of all people, verifying the need to be constructed dialogically.

Supported by the human being’s commitment to the other, to himself and to the history, Freire’s dialogicity presupposes collective action through action-reflection, as a way of intervening in the world, to transform it in a more dignified and less unequal place, taking education as a space for formation and humanization. Such an understanding implies that “action and reflection are in a such form solitaries, in a such radical interaction that, sacrificed, even in part, one of them, immediately resents the other”, and that “[...] there is no true speech, that it is no praxis”, making “[...] to say the true speech is to transform the world” (Freire, 1975, p. 91). Because, when the speech is emptied of action, we turn it in “words, verbalism, blah-blah-blah”, it means, it becomes an alienated and alienating word, uncommitted to transformation (Freire, 1975, p. 92). And when more emphasis is placed on action in detriment of reflection, “activism” is produced, “action for the sake of action”, which “denies true praxis and makes dialogue impossible” (Freire, 1975, p. 92).

Promoting a dialogical relationship between people, the adverse context and the inventive capacity of human beings to reinvent themselves and to transform is the meaning of love as a Freire’s category, because “if I don’t love the world, if I don’t love life, if I don’t love men [and women], dialogue is not possible for me” (Freire, 2011, p. 111). From this perspective, the dialogicity resulting from Freire’s love becomes collective love gestated in human relationships and adversities, which uses the human the right to speech to “fight” against violations and to pronounce the possibilities of subjects transformation.

Freire’s dialogicity, based on speaking, exists in solidary and fraternal love, a creative process guided by the dialogical movement of action-reflection, capable of perceiving lack of love situations for others, such as: contexts of exploitation, submission relationships, rights violation or all these situations together; and realizing them acts to transform a lack of love in love, exploitation into equality, submission into autonomy and the rights violation in social justice and dignity. The understanding of these contexts and historical injustices contributes to the knowledge of the “[...] presence of the oppressor introjected in the figure of the oppressed [...]” (Freire, 2013, p. 89), allowing the educator to propose the deconstruction of this paradigm, presenting dialogical situations of learning and reflection, sprouting solidarity by the speech and the action in the world.

Courage act, “[…] never fear, love is a commitment to men. Wherever they are, oppressed, the love act is in committing themselves to their cause. The liberation cause” (Freire, 2011, p. 111). A courage attitude and commitment to oneself, to others and to future generations, Freire’s love is love for the world, for people (whether they are oppressed or oppressors). The love for the other manifests itself in the speech that educates and liberates, because “liberation is a possibility; not fate, not destiny, not fadarium” (Freire, 2013, [cover]).

This is the Freire’s love – disinterested in himself to be interested in the other, in their social causes, in their violated rights, in their undreamed of dreams, “forbidden” to love dialogically because their condition as an oppressed subject prevents them from seeing beyond themself and removes from them the hope of believing first in themself, in their transforming and creative capacity – which guides them to hope, because the hopeless subject only waites, and only waiting, does not question, does not act, does not transform, does not love.

According to Freire, hope is an integral part of the dialogical process of human beings in the world, as important as the courageous act of loving, because “there is no dialogue without hope either. Hope is in the own essence of human imperfection” (Freire, 2011, p. 113). However, Freire’s hope is not processed in the sense of the insignificant wait of “waiting for the sake of waiting”, quite the contrary, hope in the dialogical perspective happens in the sense of hoping, the trust that becomes struggle, so that “I move in the hope while I fight and, if I fight with hope, I hope” (Freire, 2011, p. 114). Hoping means fighting, but fighting with hope, in a fearless and courageous way, intervening and transforming situations of oppression, committed to the historicity of oneself and others around.

Elaborated during the exile context, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed intended to be freedom, because, when Freire wrote to the world about the oppression of the other, he pronounced himself also oppressed in exile condition. However, even in face of arbitrary intolerance, he teached love is dialogic, he claimed human rights. He screamed hope and freedom. And it was his concern for others, with their dignity, that guided the creation of a pedagogy for human beings. Such pedagogy would contribute to the liberation of the subject from the oppressed condition, building himself as the protagonist of his history and his life. In the exile scenario, the human right to the written or spoken speech is realized as the oppressed resistance to oppression, breaking the silence and pronouncing the world about himself and the other. The right to speech is configured as a human right to education, an education that liberates, that shares, that dialogues.

One of the principles of Human Rights, freedom allows human beings to enjoy other rights, such as the right to come and go, the right to express themselves, the right to communicate. But beyond that, it gives us the right to dream, to project ourselves in the future, retrace paths or even start over. Therefore, Freire’s freedom is based on Human Rights, as it allows us to dream and, according to Freire (2014), even dreams require struggle, effort, resilience. Freire’s dream is dreamed together and articulates the right and duty to change the world, because “dreams are projects that we fight. Their realization is not easily verified, on the contrary, advances, retreats, sometimes long marches. It implies struggle” (Freire, 2014, p. 62).

The struggle for rights constitutes the essence of being human rights. Among them, the conquest for the right to freedom. However, freedom is not enough without the necessary conditions and guarantees for it to be realized or enjoyed, as this right is not exhausted, on the contrary, it is rooted in many others, such as the right to dignity and the human right to education, for example. Now, the own social history of human rights is marked by struggle and does not end when a right is conquered, but when its guarantee takes place effectively in people’s lives.

“Then, where to start a story about human rights? It depends on the point of view adopted” (Trindade, 2011, p. 16). Even it can be treated from different perspectives (philosophical, historical, social, political, religious, legal, among other forms), it is understood that the basic elements of human rights encompass human dignity and freedom. These foundations date back to the axiological period of the pre-Christian era, more precisely to the VIII century bC, considered the proto-history of human rights, that is, the moment of the first mechanisms for valuing human dignity.

Hammurabi’s Code, in 1690 BC, says: “the Magna Charta Libertatum, which King John of England was forced to accept in 1215” (Trindade, 2011, p. 16), the French Revolution of 18th Century and its (bourgeois) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen are some of the normative historical apparatuses that guide human rights. In the midst of this historiography of human rights, proto-history conceived the human being in his vital characteristics of rationality and existence, but different in the way of seeing and acting on the universe. Perhaps that is why this period is presented by Comparato (2008) as the most beautiful and important part of history:

[...] what is told in these pages is the most beautiful and important part of all History: the revelation that all human beings, despite the countless biological and cultural differences that distinguish them from one another, deserve equal respect, as the only beings in the world. able to love, discover truth and create beauty. It is the universal acknowledgment that, due to this radical equality, no one – no individual, gender, ethnicity, social class, religious group or nation – can claim to be superior to others

(Comparato, 2008, p. 1).

From this, the person becomes recognized in his humanity. Such specificity attributed to this time the first ideological roots of another principle: the essential equality that, by recognizing the person in his humanity, served as the foundation for the universality of human rights, because

[...] it is from the axial period that, for the first time in history, human beings are considered, in their essential equality, as being endowed with freedom and reason, despite the multiple differences of sex, race, religion or social customs. Thus, the intellectual foundations were laid for the understanding of the human person and for the affirmation of the existence of universal rights, because they are inherent

(Comparato, 2008, p. 11).

The understanding emerged that individuals, despite cultural and biological differences, were endowed with a universal particularity present in the essence of every person, “their humanity”. However, the peculiar characteristic of universally recognizing the “person in his humanity” only happens after the enactment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (UNICEF, 1948), which constitutes an important milestone in the historiography of Human Rights.

Prepared by the International Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations (UN), in response to the barbarities committed during the 2nd World War and as a way of repairing the damage caused to humanity, the UDHR “opens with the affirmation that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights; are endowed with reason and conscience and must act between each other in a spirit of fraternity (Article I)” (Comparato, 2008, p. 15).

After four decades, between the enactment of the UDHR, in 1948, and its incorporation in the Brazilian legal framework, through the Constitution of 1988, the question arises: do the principles of human rights, protected in the Constitution, in fact, integrate the life of the population, or are they just legal mechanisms recommended in the letter of the law, not taking place at the time of compliance with the norm?

These reflections depart from the concern of Herrera Flores (2009, p. 33), when he alerts us to the traditional understanding of human rights:

[...] the idea that floods all traditional discourse resides in the following formula: the basic content of human rights is the ‘right to have rights’. Many rights! And must the benefits that such rights guarantee? What about do the material conditions to demand or put them in practice? What about must the social struggles that be put in practice in order to guarantee fairer access and a dignified life?

The concern of Herrera Flores (2009) points to the simplistic understanding, as he called it, about human rights, which puts them on the level of mere legal formality, emphasizing the quantitative aspects of the “right to have rights”, without considering the own struggle to conquer them. Limiting human rights to the sphere of the “right to have rights”, when, in fact, human rights have a being raison that goes beyond this issue of being another right guaranteed by law yet, which implies, above all, having the minimum conditions to exercise them or make them effective, this conception does not contribute to firm their implementation.

Now, in view of the Declaration of Human Rights, which Brazil is a signatory, the incorporation of its basic principles in the legal list of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of 1988 looks at human dignity within the scope of the legal system, so that:

[...] the value of human dignity imposes itself as the basic core and informer of the Brazilian legal system, as a criterion and valuation parameter to guide the interpretation and understanding of the constitutional system established in 1988. Human dignity and fundamental rights come to constitute the constitutional principles that they incorporate the demands of justice and ethical values

(Piovesan, 2003, p. 339).

In this sense, the rights of humanity configured in the fundamental guarantees legally instituted are juxtaposed with the constitutionally prescribed democratic ideals. However, legal normative support alone does not guarantee the realization of rights, hence the need of recognition and protection of legal guarantees of human rights, because “[...] without recognized and protected human rights, there is no democracy; without democracy, there are no minimum conditions for the peaceful resolution of conflicts” (Bobbio, 2004, p. 1). For these reasons, to guarantee the realization of human rights, in addition to be a necessary condition for the subjects’ liberation, is a political and democratic attitude.

In this space of construction of dignity and democracy, Freire’s speech teaches the world about “respect for the dignity of the other” (Freire, 2000, p. 62), about possibilities of being more and fighting without violence. His speech, in line with Human Rights, echoes in each of us and educates for freedom! Because, “this country cannot continue to belong of the few […]. Let us fight for the democratization of this country. March, people of our country […]” (Freire, 2000, p. 63).

Final Considerations

Finding oneself in front of Paulo Freire’s thought to discuss the right to speech as a human right to summon other rights, such as: the right to freedom of thought and expression, the right to communication, the right to non-censorship, the right to education and so many other essential rights to the lives of each and every one, people, citizens of the world, means “revisiting” the history of the oppressed to extract his speech, his silence, his resistance.

It could be said that it is like wrapping in a patchwork quilt, woven by the line of the speech, each patch that constitutes it is at the same time autonomous and dependent, and it is in this metaphor that the dialectical dynamics of Freire’s work is concretized: freedom depends on critical awareness and this is only understood as free by the threads of the speech that educates; hope fuels indignation and puts it in constant dialogue that becomes protest: protests are made for the guarantee of the right to “be more” in the world; to learn to say about oneself; to take possession of the human vocation, in which existence is fully realized. This dialectical and critical path is and is understood as a human right to the speech that recognizes the speech in life and life in the speech.

The right to speech is achieved through the recognition that the speech exists in the world. Thus, Speech and World are not categories that exclude each other and they have more than pedagogical function in Freire’s work, as they speak of a certain ontological condition that inhabits the subjects and that make them recognize themselves as subjects of rights, when they discover that they are capable of to read the reality of the world and can expand this reading when prepared to read the symbolically written word.

The speech that crosses the world and the lives of subjects confers rights, freedom, autonomy, citizenship and critical-emancipating awareness. From this perspective, it is possible to understand all of Freire’s work as a compendium in favor of human liberation, spelled out by the speech active, militant, questioning, denouncing structures of injustice and at the same time announcing and promoting new possibilities, new subjects, new relationships and new society. Freire’s work opens gaps, breaks down barriers, creates respect, tolerance, demands posture, proposes rights and opens dialogues. His work is essentially dialogic.

Paulo Freire’s reading, especially in this time marked by negationism, destruction of rights and disrespect for human dignity, is to return to utopia, is to feed on the bread of the speech that nourishes our dreams, which again questions our place in the world and puts us in a position to make the speech fight, action and reaction. It means appropriating what has never been seen before, perceiving the construction of the future as possible, by overcoming a “problematic situation through praxis” (Puiggrós, 1998, p. 106). It is to make the speech a right and from it to summon other fundamental rights for the realization of existence as a project of freedom. Thus, taking ownership of the right to speech that creates and generates rights, subjects speak about themselves from themselves and with others, in a dynamic that only those who want to be socially and politically free understand. In this project of being more, education has an important role to play.

Note

• 1
  This interventional capacity, implicit in Freire’s dialogicity, is articulated with Arendt’s Theory of Natality, since both are based on the search for human dignity and on the principles of freedom and social justice, proposing the intervention of human beings in the world as way to improve it and/or transform it in a fairer and more dignified place for humanity. In Arendt’s understanding (1990), the individual who is born, brings potential life with him and when he assumes his intervention capacity in anti-democratic conjunctures, he becomes a presence in the world. By becoming a presence in the world, the person’s birth is not limited to the act of being simply born, but rather, of being re-dimensioned to a much broader perspective, that birth means understanding that the person was born to relate and intervene in the world that surrounds him. Birth brings hope for the person to become a human being in fullness and rights.

Availability of research data

the dataset supporting the results of this study is published in this article.

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Edited by

Editor in charge: Luís Henrique Sacchi dos Santos

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  17 May 2022
• Accepted
  24 Apr 2023