Abstract
This article discusses the importance of reading in literacy processes based on an analysis of the work A importância do ato de ler: em três artigos que se completam and focusing on how the act of reading is understood by the educator Paulo Freire from the theoretical-methodological perspective of phenomenology associated to Christian existentialism. Freire was a defender of the concept of “word-world”, understood as the interrelationship between literacy and learning how to read and write. The analysis proposed articulates authors who dialogue with Freire, among them Mikhail Bakhtin and Magda Becker Soares. The article also presents some reflections on the contributions of the educator to the establishment of the “word-world” and the convergences and divergences between Paulo Freire’s phenomenology and Karl Marx’s historical materialism.
Keywords
reading; Paulo Freire; literacy; phenomenology; historical materialism