All cultural action either serves domination or liberation, never neutral

Evidence

Cultural action is always a systematic and deliberate form of action which operates upon the social structure, either with the objective of preserving that structure or of transforming it. As a form of deliberate and systematic action, all cultural action has its theory which determines its ends and thereby defines its methods. Cultural action either serves domination (consciously or unconsciously) or it serves the liberation of men and women. As these dialectically opposed types of cultural action operate in and upon the social structure, they create dialectical relations of permanence and change. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 575

Categorization

• DEFINE: The chapter’s closing definition of cultural action as inherently valenced — useful as a litmus test for whether a redesigned learning situation is truly transformative.
• XREF: connects to: Technology is never neutral but already carries domination in its construction. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 98