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Oppression
noun
Oppression
noun
1. the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjustmanner.
2. an act or instance of oppressing or subjecting to cruel or unjust impositions or restraints.
3. the state of being oppressed.
4. the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, anxiety, etc.
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Such a great book on the nature of oppression. It would do the world good if everyone read and absorbed this. It makes perfect sense.
A few quotes from the first chapter:
"The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion."
"The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalised. The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors between speaking out of being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world. This is the tragic dilemma of the oppressed which their education must take into account."
"To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of transforming the world and history is naive and simplistic. It is to admit the impossible: a world without people. This objectivistic position if as ingenuous as that of subjectivism, which postulates people without a world. World and human beings do not exist apart from each other, they exist in constant interaction."
"Reality which becomes oppressive results in the contradistinction of men as oppressors and oppressed. The latter, whose task it is to struggle for their liberation together with those who show true solidarity, must acquire a critical awareness of oppression through the praxis of this struggle. One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings' consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it."
"Any situation in which "A" objectively exploits "B" or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual's ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the results of the violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed has there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons-not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognised. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate the terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the "rejects of life." It is not the tyrannised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.
For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call "the oppressed" but - depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not - "those people" or"the blind and envious masses" or "savages" or "natives" or "subversives") who are disaffected, who are "violent," "barbaric," "wicked," or "ferocious" when they react to the violence of the oppressors."
"Acts which prevent the restoration of the oppressive regime cannot be compared with those by which a few men and women deny the majority their right to be human.
However, the moment the new regime hardens into a dominating "bureaucracy" the humanist dimension of the struggle is lost and it is no longer possible to speak of liberation. Hence our insistence that the authentic solution of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction does not lie in a mere reversal of position, in moving from one pole to the other. Nor does it lie in the replacement of the former oppressors with new ones who continue to subjugate the oppressed - all in the name of their liberation.
But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated labourers, the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors profound violation of their individual rights - although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are "things." For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognised, but simply concerned, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence."
Every paragraph is worth quoting on here but I'll stop there..
Go buy the book, I had to read some bits a few times to understand it properly but it really is one of those books you could pick up and read front to back over and over, and everyone should.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Penguin-Education-Freire/dp/014025403X
All photos found on Google images.
4. the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, anxiety, etc.
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Such a great book on the nature of oppression. It would do the world good if everyone read and absorbed this. It makes perfect sense.
A few quotes from the first chapter:
"The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion."
"The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalised. The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors between speaking out of being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world. This is the tragic dilemma of the oppressed which their education must take into account."
"To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of transforming the world and history is naive and simplistic. It is to admit the impossible: a world without people. This objectivistic position if as ingenuous as that of subjectivism, which postulates people without a world. World and human beings do not exist apart from each other, they exist in constant interaction."
"Reality which becomes oppressive results in the contradistinction of men as oppressors and oppressed. The latter, whose task it is to struggle for their liberation together with those who show true solidarity, must acquire a critical awareness of oppression through the praxis of this struggle. One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings' consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it."
"Any situation in which "A" objectively exploits "B" or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual's ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the results of the violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed has there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons-not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognised. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate the terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the "rejects of life." It is not the tyrannised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.
For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call "the oppressed" but - depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not - "those people" or"the blind and envious masses" or "savages" or "natives" or "subversives") who are disaffected, who are "violent," "barbaric," "wicked," or "ferocious" when they react to the violence of the oppressors."
"Acts which prevent the restoration of the oppressive regime cannot be compared with those by which a few men and women deny the majority their right to be human.
However, the moment the new regime hardens into a dominating "bureaucracy" the humanist dimension of the struggle is lost and it is no longer possible to speak of liberation. Hence our insistence that the authentic solution of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction does not lie in a mere reversal of position, in moving from one pole to the other. Nor does it lie in the replacement of the former oppressors with new ones who continue to subjugate the oppressed - all in the name of their liberation.
But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated labourers, the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors profound violation of their individual rights - although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are "things." For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognised, but simply concerned, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence."
Every paragraph is worth quoting on here but I'll stop there..
Go buy the book, I had to read some bits a few times to understand it properly but it really is one of those books you could pick up and read front to back over and over, and everyone should.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Penguin-Education-Freire/dp/014025403X
All photos found on Google images.
