'Eu, não, nós!' : o humanismo relacional de Paulo Freire como princípio epistemológico para uma pedagogia crítica

Abstract

This Doctoral thesis in Education with the title “Me, no, we!” Paulo Freire's relational humanism as an epistemological principle for a critical pedagogy", enrolled in the Stricto Sensu Graduate Program in Education at the Catholic University of Santos, had as a guiding question: What are the limits and possibilities of Freire's humanist theory as an epistemological principle for a critical pedagogy in the context of neoliberal cybernetic society? And as object of investigation the "humanist theory of Freire: epistemological principle". It was established as a general objective: to understand the limits and possibilities of Freire's humanist theory as an epistemological principle for a critical pedagogy in the context of neoliberal cybernetic society. The thesis that guided the investigation was structured in the following formulation: humanization as an epistemological principle for the elaboration of emancipatory knowledge is an ethical-political presupposition of Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy that requires certain material and symbolic conditions. Among them, the fundamental one is a dialogical, dialectical, emancipatory educational relationship, intended for the problematization of the existential situations of the students, in which each epistemic subject recognizes himself in his condition as a free subject and can pronounce his word as an expression of his humanization. From a qualitative approach, the design of the research question, objectives, thesis, literature review, results and data analysis were developed from the Marx/Engels Dialectical Historical Materialist (DMH) method, focusing on the Epistemology of Education, with interdisciplinary theoretical contributions from Critical Theory, from Freire's Critical Pedagogy and from the Epistemologies of the South, from Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Empirical data found in bibliography by Paulo Freire and about Freire were constituted as a field of investigation. To this end, bibliographic research techniques were used for the collection and selection of data, with theoretical support in the Grounded Theory for content analysis, according to Strauss-Corbin (2008). And, for the interpretation of the results, I resorted to dialectical-critical hermeneutics according to Ghedin-Franco (2015). The results of the research, through the technique of Thematic Investigation, by Paulo Freire in the texts “Role of Education in Humanization”, “Education as a practice of freedom”, “Education as a gnosiological situation” and “In the shadow of this mango tree”, highlighted the positive dimensions of the object, characterized in Freire's explanatory statements conceptually organized into the macro categories Axiology, Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology and in the final synthesis category “being able to say your word”. In the final considerations, were appointed as a limit the logic of epistemicide that still persists in our official educational practices, characterized by the epistemic subservience of the scientistic monoculture with the assumption of 'true knowledge' in the curricula, in the didactics, in the methodologies, and by the silencing of everything which does not fit the concept of 'orthodox knowledge'; the permanent crisis of the teleology of education, that is, because education is a human social act, among humans, for the formation of the human in the creation of the human world, this crisis will always be the trigger of disputes between groups with different conceptions in relation to purpose of the educational action; and, in this time identified as Anthropocene, we have to ask ourselves again what is the place of the human (in the research identified as the “autonomous epistemic person”) in the adventure of education as a process of humanization of the self and the world. And as possibilities were pointed out: the right to the creative imagination of alternative worlds not based on neoliberal mercantilist logic; vigilant attention to the collective struggle (unions, movements, collectives etc.); and the need to remake a process of faith in the human being as fellows in the journey of building the human world. According to this situation in which the human being seems to be being deterritorialized, dematerialized in the digital ubiquity, I reaffirm the validity of the humanist ethical-political option proposed by Freire and the essential place of the human in the production of critical-emancipatory knowledge in the context of the neoliberal cybernetic society.