ABSTRACT
The notion of wide-awakeness is perhaps one of the most notable concepts in Maxine Greene's philosophy. This chapter takes a "call and response" approach to examining these key ideas from the works of Greene and Paulo Freire that are parallel and complementary to each other. It concludes by reframing radical hope as a "theory of change" in which imagination can be understood as an insurgent praxis useful for destabilizing the contemporary global neoliberal order that is more concerned with creating workers and consumers than democratically minded citizens. By participating as knowledgeable subjects in the processes of aesthetic education and reading the word and the world, learners begin to develop wide-awakeness and/or critical consciousness, ultimately affording opportunities for expanding their vision of social transformation. Maxine Greene captures this idea in her description of social imagination, whereas Freire theorizes about the importance of radical hope.
