Conscientization requires reading social power relations and one’s own formation within them

Evidence

Paulo Freire (2014) introduced conscientization or critical consciousness, which is essentially the practice that enables “action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (p. 56). Burch (2016) described conscientization as “the process of learning to read powers and relation in society and in learning to grasp how our own subjectivities are in large part products of these selfsame relations” (p. 41). Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness “as a transcendent position allowing one to see and understand positions of inclusion and exclusion—margins and mainstreams” (Ladson-Billings, 2000, p. 403) intersects with critical consciousness. Thus, the pedagogy of the veil is definitively informed by Freirean “action and reflection” in changing the understanding of the oppressor and oppressed. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 271

Categorization

• DEFINE: Burch’s rendering — subjectivity as product of the very relations we learn to read — is a sharp one-sentence gloss on critical consciousness.
• XREF: connects to: Internalized needs remain heteronomous products of dominant interests. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 115; Knowing social relations historically enables individuals to multiply their agency collectively — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1260; Human self-development is inseparable from transforming external social relations — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1285 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Knowing relations genetically and combining with others magnifies individual power to change them #expands (0.88)
• Knowing social relations historically enables individuals to multiply their agency collectively #expands (0.82) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1260
• Human self-development is inseparable from transforming external social relations #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1285
• The individual’s inner mental relations mirror social relations among persons #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 354
• Self-understanding is achieved through struggle between opposing hegemonies #corroborates (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1199