The oppressed feel an ambivalent attraction to emulating their oppressors’ lifestyle

Evidence

On the other hand, at a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction towards the oppressors and their way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors, to imitate them, to follow them. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in the middle-class oppressed, who yearn to be equal to the “eminent” men and women of the upper class. Albert Memmi, in an exceptional analysis of the “colonized mentality,” refers to the contempt he felt towards the colonizer, mixed with “passionate” attraction towards him. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 152

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Memmi’s ‘colonized mentality’ analysis and to the reader’s aim of understanding why learners may resist genuinely problem-posing education that threatens upward imitation. — connects to: Contemporary heterosexual men know patriarchy is finished but cling to its pleasures — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1325