critical consciousness

à propos of nothing ;-)

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

"But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors."

"The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creation of people, people themselves, time, everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal. ...The oppressed, as objects, as things, have no purposes except those their oppressor prescribes for them."

"It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation."

Paulo Freire
from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968
compiled by M. M. (thanks!)