(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL dossier spécial sur
l'éducation populaire - Popular education: In our shared anger, learn
together (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
In popular education practices, there are good and less good. So much so that we sometimes
question the motives of some and some: shine? if lather? believe above the fray? At the
risk of offending, it must be remembered here: Popular Education is acting as equals, with
humility, and to advance our class consciousness. ---------- What is popular education?
These are spaces aiming to produce critical and mobilizing knowledge. But how to go about
producing such knowledge? ---- We can identify three streams, which all are outside the
yoke of the state and its labels, and who, with the same purpose, implement very
contradictory practices or completely divergent. These contradictions betray different
conceptions of the relationship to production and dissemination of knowledge. We can
identify three main ones: the humanist, the pédagogiste current and a more materialistic
current.
While the first two have some striking similarities with the dominant institutions, the
latter shall endeavor to take into account the reality of social classes and political issues.
A humanist: between distinction and cultural goodwill
In the wake of the ideology of the Enlightenment, the current that can be described as a
humanist is carried by a progressive vision of the world based on faith in the statement:
"knowledge" is considered an emancipatory power spirits, forming the basis for release of
an individual education of obscurantism and an informed citizenship. This is to the
universal heritage available to the people.
For this lecture courses are taught, and the great scholars of the Republic are invited to
share their knowledge to the greatest number. What is intended is an individual
appropriation of knowledge, "self-construction", in the words of Michel Onfray.
The People's University of Caen Michel Onfray is indeed a typical example of this
humanist. The objective Onfray is an illusory "elitism for all". This is, as in the
popular universities of the 1900s, to change people and their mentality. In this
humanistic philosophy, which implicitly calls for acculturation and acculturation of the
dominated classes include idealism at best, and at worst colonialism ...
Who are the people who are interested in this kind of proposal? They are mainly teachers,
artists, people with sufficient economic capital to have the leisure to attend such
lectures. In doing so, they acquire and develop their "legitimate culture", and thus
provide the means of social ascent. They are, in the words of the Communist novelist Paul
Nizan, "candidates for the bourgeoisie."
The popular classes for their part are completely excluded from these spaces. And this
exclusion is denied by partisan and supporters of this humanist: they argue and they
indeed that free and non-selection allow classes to enjoy these spaces. But the most basic
observation shows obvious that this is not the case.
If these places are so popular for excluding classes, because they are kneaded habitus of
the dominant class: language is refined and slow, the body is put away, the audience is
placed in a situation of total passivity, abstraction is the rule and the almost
non-existent materiality. These places are a social ceremony distinction: it includes it
as the ruling class expects that it entails.
A common pédagogiste: the taste of consensus and rhetoric
At the intersection of popular education and animation, we meet many people passionate
about active teaching.
Who are these people? Home we notice a striking sociological unit. Many are more or less
self-taught; they have an ambivalent relationship to the school system, which makes them
criticize the instruction while recognizing the importance of critical knowledge. They
parallel a strong need to be "heard" and legitimized, which contradicts the libertarian
impulses happy holding them to want to take power.
Their posture is theorized by the philosopher Jacques Rancière in his book The Master
ignorant: they teach what they do not, and claim equality principle (and not equal facts).
Or, and this is the rub, this posture allows them to bypass the issue of social and
material inequalities, which greatly complicate things ... No wonder that these activists
are fond of workshops "nonviolent "con¬sensuelle of cooperation, rather than accepting the
conflictual social relationships and uncover.
We find this behavior in what Marx called the "petty-bourgeois objectivism": "The
democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie, therefore an intermediate class in
which blunted the interests of two opposite classes, imagines himself to be above the
class antagonisms. "[1]
On the form, these activists willingly dramatize their interventions and will always
oppose the magisterial forms. They and they complement a cool and friendly appearance with
a rhetorical foolproof enabling them to impress admiring learners. They and they also like
to raise psychoanalysis elements. By participating in their courses or workshops, there
will then be psychoanalyze cheaply ...
But emphasizing the technical to the political, social and psychoanalysis, this current
takes the risk of depoliticizing and dé¬socialiser and thus playing into the prevailing
ideologies, despite their inclination to be alternative.
A current materialistic: the critical pessimism to optimism for action
Where the two currents described above seek above all to bring about changes in mentality,
the materialist current research primarily practice change. Rather than self-construction
of the petty bourgeois dominant, he values the collective mobilizations and necessary
trial and error. Instead the status of class-object (thought, spoken and educated by
others), it is the class-subject (thinking, speaking and self-educating) that is searched.
This current is rooted in the labor movement, feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial and
young: the popular self-education first and most concerned is realized in taking charge of
collective anger. It is through this collective mobilization that will create a "joyful
process" by the exchanges and discussions that we together analyze social situations that
we live, and that it produces knowledge. But you will find these steps in any literature
devoted to popular education, apart from the thesis of Alexia Morvan.[2]
Yet they are implemented here or there, and claim to popular education. We can cite some
examples.
The first is the association La Trouvaille[3], in Rennes: it is a collective of women, two
of whom fought against patriarchal violence within the scop Le Pavé - autodissoute today.
You can check out their site.
The second is Ch'faid[4], an association of Libercourt in the heart of the mining area of
Pas-de-Calais. Ch'faid conducts action research on the legacy of the working class, mining
culture and immigration. For this, the members of Ch'faid explore their personal and
family histories, and question what they experience and what their parents have suffered
from sexist institutions, colonial and classist. Ch'faid is supported by the Lighthouse
Association for Equality, which brings together sociologists who are also heirs and
heiresses ¬cette history of mining and immigration. Unlike the rules of sociology who want
to be outside or sociologist on it, Lighthouse members for equality are choosing to
position themselves as objects and subjects of their studies, as they are affected by
subject they study, and they collectively contribute to the construction of a knowledge
that serves their common interests.
Through this materialistic approach is the idea developed by the sociologist Abdelmalek
Sayad: it includes only what has been interest in understanding. It is the need that
creates knowledge.
Joackim Rebecca, sociologist and former member of the scop the Pavement
HOW TO ENGAGE PEOPLE? THREE REGISTERS OF INTERVENTION
The register first, Marxist orientation, is based on the awareness of belonging to a
subordinate group (class domination, race, gender, age). But if we know that these exist
objectively dominated groups (the class in itself), popular education works to develop
awareness to be part of (the class for itself).
The second register is in Bourdieu's tradition. Each person adjusts his behavior to his
social environment, without which she finds herself "codes of crisis." To overcome this
crisis, humanists advocate to adjust its behavior in the middle. To the materialist the
contrary, this misalignment is a mobilizing factor to change the rules of the game.
The third register comes from Spinoza. For him, the power to act, it is the power to
affect or be affected. The more our emotions (which always come to us from the outside)
are cheerful, the more our power of action will be significant, and the opposite happens
with sad affects. Be careful though that our emotions do not lead us to mobilize against
our interests.
[1] Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte, Social Publishing, 1963, p-45
[2] Alexia Morvan, "For a popular political education", PhD in Educational Sciences,
Paris-VIII, 2011.
[3] http://la-trouvaille.org.
[4] Facebook.com/Chfaid
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Pratiques-de-nos-coleres-communes
