Alternative methodologies: approximations between Paulo Freire and the epistemologies of the South, characteristics and possible interfaces

Emancipación; dialogicidad; epistemologías del Sur; liberación; autonomía; crítica.

Abstract

Critical thinking gives the individual the possibility of looking at the whole of something and, at the same time, conditions him/her to identify each part that makes up this whole. It is from there that the individual assumes a place, a point of view, according to Freire (2015). It is in this process that democracy finds its foundation, in the diversity of points of view and in the possibility of assuming this or that “place” after critically examining previous thoughts. Emancipation is a condition for this process to take place. Through education we collect the elements so that our emancipatory constitution is possible. We find in the dialogicity brought by Freire (1987) one of the possible ways for democracy to operate according to its concept (means), and education to act in the direction and with a view to emancipation (end). In this critical perspective, the epistemologies of the South walk, through the ecology of knowledge and the sociology of absences. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018) teaches us that being with Freire (2015) is being within the South/South dialogues. This work thinks about liberating and emancipatory education in the light of Freire’s thought and the epistemologies of the South.