ABSTRACT
Critical practice promotes social change by challenging structural disadvantage and oppression. Marx had a specific idea of the change needed, given his reading of the political economic context of his time. But this reading, or at least the orthodox interpretation of it, is deemed by some, including those of the Frankfurt School, to be too rigid and deterministic. Given the potentially broad applications of Freire’s (1972) work, his approach to critical pedagogy seems particularly useful as a scaffold in extending our thinking about consciousness-raising. Freire’s (1972: 60) critical pedagogy was meant to “transform the world” through the raising of consciousness (that is, the development of critical consciousness). As noted in Chapter 1, depictions of consciousness-raising in critical practice literature generally point to a common set of outcomes: recognition by the oppressed of their disadvantage and oppression, discernment of the links between personal experience and broader social structures, and the ability to resist and/or challenge the existing order (Allan, Pease, & Briskman, 2009; Fook, 2012; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Reed, Newman, Suarez, & Lewis, 2011). Another way of saying it is that critical consciousness, the outcome of consciousness-raising, represents the capacity to resist dominant discourses and to challenge oppression and disadvantage. Some might argue, however, that the challenging of oppression and disadvantage (action) goes beyond what critical consciousness (the capacity for critical reflection) represents. But Freire (1972) saw reflection and action as inalienable from each other. Reflection and action are closely bound together. The two have no significance independent of one another. Reflection without action is idle. Action without reflection is just action for the sake of action—mindless activism. Freire (1972: 60) did make a distinction between reflection and action, and this was essential in arguing his notion of “praxis”: the iterative interplay of reflection and action—of theory and practice—with both having equal importance. And so, we can speak of two distinct but closely interrelated concepts: critical consciousness and critical action. Critical consciousness (achieved through critical thinking/reflexivity) represents the discernment of internalized oppression 153and the links between this and the social order, while critical action represents the pursuit of changes in social reality.
