Thou and It

The essence of humanising dialogue, for both Freire and Buber, is the relational nature of human existnace and thus dialogue as authentic existence. Freire (1972, p. 63) claims that ‘I cannot exist without a non-I,’

essentially expressing Buber’s belief that ‘all real living is meeting’ (Buber, 1958, p.11). For Buber, as discussed above, dialogue could only happen within the context of an I-Thou relationship and requires a mutual ‘turning-to’.

Dialogue is a ‘necessary posture,’ albeit something that can be learned and refined, and suggests that our relationships are tantamount to living and changing the world. Freire and Buber do acknowledge that life can exist without dialogue, but rather that meaningful human existence requires dialogue, referring to an ontological concept of dialogue also reflected supported by Sidorkin (1999) and Gadamer (2013).

Beyond a normative ontological stance, dialogue also forms an

epistemological way of acquiring knowledge. Without inquiry or praxis, ‘men cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other’ (Freire, 1972, p. 58).

Perlman (1990) also views Buber’s epistemology as constructed on the

‘narrow ridge’ between objectivity and subjectivity, when one is in Thou. Freire (1997) and Buber (1958) emphasise the importance of communion with the natural world as well as with humans and God. Ultimately, dialogue and meeting with the other must occur in communities and contexts in which we live and move (Buber, 2002, p. 23) and also require love and humility

(Roberts, 2000).

Having established the dialogical nature of being, we then come to understand self and identity through the construction of the ‘Other.’ The

‘Other’ in humanising dialogue cannot connote the ‘subaltern’ (Spivak, 1988) or a diminished, objectified body, for true dialogue allows only for mutuality and wholeness (Buber, 2002) and individuals become fully human only in engaging in such I-Thou relationships where we are the ‘Thou’ to someone’s

‘I’. The human ‘Other’ only exists in the realm of dialogue, not in the realm of objects and experience, or I-It. Furthermore, the ‘Other’ is not the opposite of oneself but part of oneself, differing from a Hegelian dialectic relationship and constituting a distinctive relational state (Metcalfe and Game, 2012).

Both Freire and Buber view dialogue as a state of love whereas I-It

relationships and oppressive relationships are made of desire, also a primary distinction between Hegelian dialectics and dialogue (Hudson, 2010). Buber (1958) extends this to say that dialogue has ‘no aim, no lust and no

anticipation’ and that we no longer allow our preconceived ideas or memories to shape our view of the person or object.

Buber’s concept of I-Thou responds to critiques by feminists such as bell hooks (1994), Weiler (1991) and Elsworth (1989) who claim that Freire does

not allow enough space for multiple layers of identity or struggle, including feminist perspectives. While Mayo (1999) defends Freire on this point,

claiming that Freire encourages everyone to confront the oppressor within and recognises that we all have layers of oppressed and oppressor identities, this may not go far enough in dealing with the complexities of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, nationality or language. Buber’s concept of dialogue entails seeing and accepting all the categories that constitute a person without reducing a person to any single category or configuration of categories.

The negotiation of power relations remains a source of tension between Buber’s I-Thou and Freire’s praxis. Freire believes that dialogue between oppressed and oppressor cannot occur and that ‘those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and

prevent the continuation of this dehumanising aggression’ (Freire, 1972, p.

71). However, Freire in his later works, e.g. A Pedagogy of Hope (1994) and in his talking books such as with Ira Shor (Shor and Freire, 1987), Freire further explains these views and moves away from such a distinct dichotomy, perhaps following challenges to implementing his work in Africa (Freire, 1978) or in Brazil (Freire, 1991). On the other hand, Buber does not fully address power in his I-Thou text and does not place limits on who can engage in dialogue with whom, though he notes that I-Thou relationships are ‘delivered up to limitation by our own insufficiency, and also placed under limitation by the inner laws of our life together’ (Buber, 1958, p.131). Buber looks beyond individuals to society’s ‘inner laws,’ which implies that structural inequalities limit our relationships and capabilities to engage in mutuality. This indicates that society itself constrains individuals or groups from coming together, limiting well-being and potential for human flourishing.

Freire also argues that the oppressor needs to engage in the process of liberation, differing from empowerment literature that focuses primarily on disadvantaged groups. According to Staub (2002), in situations of violence, this involvement of victims and perpetrators is also important in creating understanding and building peace. However, Buber’s concept of mutuality

would again lessen the need of an oppressor-oppressed dichotomy by focusing on community as opposed to a subject-object relationship. Drawing from Freire and Buber, we can ascertain that humanising dialogue is impacted by the social structures that shape our relationships and ways of being and doing in the world. Thus we constantly negotiate power and politics when constructing ourselves in relation to others. However, in a true moment of dialogue, these categories no longer exist and relationships are based on equality and mutuality.

Inclusion and Democratic Listening

Freire (1998) and Buber (1958) both argue that in dialogue, one must avoid becoming subsumed in another’s thoughts, emotions or beliefs which requires a deep form of listening which Freire calls ‘democratic listening’ and what Buber calls ‘inclusion’ (Buber, 2002). Gordon (2011) indicates that Buber also uses the term ‘embracing’ in later works to describe the process of inclusion.

This aspect sets dialogue apart from empathy where one self-annuls or

excludes ‘one’s own concreteness’ (Buber, 2002, p.115). In Between Man and Man, Buber (2002, p.115) describes inclusion as ‘a dialogical relation’, which is ‘the extension of one’s own concreteness’ and:

Its elements are, first, a relation, of no matter what kind, between two persons, second, an event experienced by them in common, in which at least one of them actively participates, and, third, the fact that this one person, without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity, at the same time lives through the common event from the standpoint of the other.

Inclusion, Buber explains, is the basis of genuine conversation and a life of dialogue. It underlines the fact that through listening and being in dialogue, our own personhoods are enhanced and enriched as we expand our realm of experience (Veck, 2013). Similarly, Freire’s (Freire, 1998, p. 107) concept of

‘democratic listening’ addresses the need to maintain one’s own position in conversation:

To listen…is a permanent attitude on the part of the subject who is listening, of being open to the word of the other, to the gesture of the other, to the differences of the other. This does

not mean of course, that listening demands that the listener be

“reduced” to the other, the speaker. This would not be listening, it would be self-annihilation.

Thus he also maintains that while democratic listening should involve the entire consideration of the Thou, the aim is not to subsume oneself in the other’s ideas.

One key element of humanising dialogue is that listening, or inclusion,

requires full consideration of the other. In terms of education, a teacher must understand a student as a whole person and attempt to meet his or her learning needs. In dialogue in peacebuilding, conflict resolution should not demand a person to give up one’s beliefs or to change but rather to remain open to the other and understand perspectives in a ‘between’ space.

Naming the World

Within Freire and Buber’s work, the concept of naming the world and hence recreating the world play essential roles in a humanising dialogue. For Freire (1972, p. 61), ‘[d]ialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world.’ In naming the world, in reading the world, the namers then have the possibility to change it. Using Buber’s I-Thou terminology, by naming the world, the namer enters into an I-Thou

relationship of wholeness and understanding of various systems, and gains the ability to shed the It categories of oppression.

At first glance, it may seem that ‘naming’ things would lead into an I-It relationship and oppose Buber’s idea of dialogue, as the realm of I-Thou exists without categories and in the present moment. However, Buber places an important value on I-It relationships and does not overlook the social structures and realities, or the It categories, that define us. Humans must constantly flow between It and Thou, leading Metcalfe and Game (2012, p.

360) to argue that the primary concern is ‘whether “It” concepts are put into dialogue with concrete reality or are used as categories to master reality.’

Thus in naming the world, or in living in the realm of I-It, one must think

critically as opposed to using categorisations to continue cycles of

objectification and oppression. Furthermore, this concept of ‘naming’ brings into play Polyani’s (1967) beliefs that value and knowledge formation often occur in a ‘tacit’ manner and that these fragments can be brought together to create new ideas and theories.

The importance of acknowledging the I-It relationship plays an important role in post-conflict contexts where categorisations of different groups have created tension and violence. In such cases, conflict cannot be resolved and justice cannot be fully restored without recognising or naming incidents, things or categories. For example, in Rwanda, research has shown that in spite of the government’s abolition of ethnic categories, people still feel them and that these categories still shape their lifeworld. This type of ‘sweeping under the carpet’ can be detrimental (Freedman, Harvey Weinstein, Murphy, &

Longman, 2008; Weinstein, Freedman, & Hughson, 2007) and potentially enable the formation of I-It relationships to occur by denying the space for the self and other to turn towards each other (Buber, 1958). In a similar way, political correctness and ‘colour blindness’ or the claim to no longer see race or difference can become forms of ‘monologue disguised as dialogue’ (Buber, 2002) by limiting individuals from naming their experiences or problems in order to change them (Fairclough, 2003). For example, Norton et al (2006) found that in interactions with African Americans, white Americans avoided using racial categories to attempt to appear ‘colour blind,’ masking problems and therefore preventing explicit challenging of unjust or oppressive actions and speech. Naming differences, or using I-It categories can provide the pathway to I-Thou dialogue by opening the opportunity to see the other and the world in wholeness and by allowing critical consciousness to develop, as discussed below. More so, in comparison to Freire’s dialogue, Buber’s I-Thou and I-It provide multiple ways to name and see the world, beyond the Marxist dialectical framing of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ prevalent in Freire’s work.

Critical Consciousness and I-Thou

As previously mentioned, a humanising dialogue requires naming the world and understanding one’s own surroundings. This process leads to what Freire calls conscientização, or critical consciousness, which constitutes one form of an I-Thou relationship. However, while Freire deems critical consciousness, along with action, as the ultimate goal of education and dialogue, Buber’s broader view of humanising dialogue accepts other endpoints and results attained from full mutuality with others and with the world.

Shor (1993) points out four key characteristics of critical consciousness:

power awareness, critical literacy, desocialization and self-organization/self-education. When one attains a state of critical consciousness there is a

‘dynamism between critical thought and critical action’ where the individual experiences a high degree of empowerment and agency (Shor, 1993, p. 31).

This level of awareness in the world and analysis and rejection of social categories and power structures complements the I-Thou nature of living in the present and shedding categorisations. Buber’s idea of critical reflection in education also reflects critical consciousness, although for Buber, critical reflection is an inherent act of learning and sorting information (Murphy, 1988) whereas for Freire it is the direct result of praxis, or action. This can also be related to more active concepts of critical thinking (Davies & Barnett, 2015) in the sense that critical reflection and analysis should be coupled with socially-oriented action. However, in its general use, the term ‘critical thinking’ does not imply the political reflection present in the use of the word ‘critical’ by critical theorists who interpret and expand upon Marxist economic and political ideals, as Freire and Buber most certainly did. This differs from the criticality of ‘critical thinking’ which describes abilities to select, interpret and synthesise information, a concept further elaborated in Chapter 7.

Buber makes more explicit in his writing the ephemeral nature of critical consciousness. While Freire expounds the necessity of constant cycles of reflection and action, and that the struggle for liberation would be made and remade through dialogue as society evolved and reinvented itself (Freire, 1972), Buber considered the challenges and even impossibility of maintaining

a state of critical consciousness at all times. Freire (1998) does acknowledge the individual challenges of listening and engaging in dialogue in his later writings, yet these obstacles lie at the heart of Buber’s work. For this reason, Buber (1958, p. 16-17) theorises that humanising dialogue can only truly exist in fleeting moments and that:

this is the exalted melancholy of our fate, that every Thou in our world must become an It. It does not matter how

exclusively present the Thou was in the direct relation. As soon as the relation has worked out or has been permeated with a means, the Thou becomes an object among objects. […]

Genuine contemplation is over in a short time.

Humanising dialogue is not meant to be maintained permanently, as ‘full mutuality is not inherent in men’s life together ‘(p.131), assuring the reader that mutuality or consciousness is not required in every moment. More importantly, humans must remain open to the possibility of the I-Thou and strive to accept the wholeness of God, of plants and animals and of fellow humans and remain open when others open towards us. The existence of It relationships serves an important purpose, as discussed above, in naming the world and in organising ideas and experiences, though critical reflection or consciousness should still be at play in order to ensure that these It

encounters do not oppress. The ability to step back, to observe a person in the world of experience or It, also acknowledges that humans are in

themselves changing constantly and that we must constantly understand these changes both in I-Thou and I-It relations. Attaining I-Thou relationships of mutuality opens people to the potential for change and for life in the present moment, another cornerstone of humanising dialogue, discussed below.

Transformation, Community and the Present Moment:

The attainment of critical consciousness then leads to the next aspect of humanising dialogue: transformation and the potential of the present moment.

This focus on change emphasises that dialogue is not a mere discussion used to understand others’ viewpoints but must have as its ultimate endpoint the transformation of society and elimination of violence and injustice. Related to this notion of transformation are two key concepts: the present moment and

community. Humanising dialogue and thus critical consciousness exist only in the here and now (Freire, 1972), as only the present offers the possibility for true change or revolution within the world and our own lives and communities.

According to Buber (2002), this state of present and potential occurs within communities and is described it as a state of ‘no –thingness,’ not nothing, but the absences of things and of categories, as a state of infinite potential (see also Metcalfe and Game, 2012).

This emphasis on the present moment and change relates to both Freire and Buber’s Marxists and utopian ideals [See Honeywell (2007) and Buber (1949) on Buber’s utopianism; Irwin (2012), Schugerensky (2011) and Torres (2014) detail Freire’s utopianism]. Buber’s (1949) Paths in Utopia discusses critiques and possibilities for developing an utopian, socialist ideal built on dialogue, contributing to Susser’s (1979) assertion that Buber was an ‘anarcho-federalist’ who believed that the enactment of dialogue in disparate communities could eventually lead to networks of cooperative unions that could jointly address societal problems. For example, Buber envisioned political and social transformation originating in small, lived experiments such as the Kibbutzim in Israel (Buber, 1949). This contrasts with Freire for whom transformation equated to a Marxian class revolution leading to the

restructuring of society into a just, peaceful space. Furthermore, Freire gives more weight to structural inequalities and historical patterns of oppression than Buber.

While Freire uses Marxist terminology of the ‘collective,’ Buber (2002, p. 37) views true dialogue as ‘community’ and not ‘collectivity,’ explaining that

‘collectivity is not a binding but a bundling together: individuals packed

together, armed and equipped in common, with only as much life from man to man as will inflame the marching step’ whereas community ‘is the being no longer side by side but with one another’ and, in moving towards a goal, ‘a dynamic facing of, the other, a flowing from I to Thou.’ Buber was critical of

‘collectivity’ and their ‘causes’ and was concerned that the constant striving for action could mask the individual, or rather one could lose ones selfhood to the

‘fiery jaws of collectivism.’ (2002, p. 131). He required a more humane consideration of social problems, undoubtedly arising from his own

experiences in Germany and Israel (Morgan and Guilherme, 2012). This also reflects Jensen’s (2009) critique of critical pedagogy in post-conflict situations because of its oppressor/oppressed dialectic and the placing of blame on certain groups. However, it should be noted that conceptual similarities exist between Freire’s collective and Buber’s community, and that Freire did not necessarily use the term ‘collective’ in the way that it has been co-opted for example in communist societies, but rather to denote solidarity in a class-based struggle (McLaren, 2000).

Despite these differences, Freire and Buber’s emphasis on the present moment and on transformation embedded in communities locate them both within the realm of the prefigurative. Van de Sande (2013, p. 230) defines the prefigurative as ‘a political action, practice, movement, moment or

development in which certain political ideals are experimentally actualised in the “here and now,” rather than hoped to be realised in a distant future.’

Prefigurative politics are generally associated with anarchist and left wing social movements, most recently in the events at Tahrir Square (Van de Sande, 2013), the Chilean student movement (Chovanec & Benitez, 2008) and the Occupy movement (Butler, 2012), but also previously with feminist movements (Epstein, 1991). Buber’s commitment to the present moment and his utopian vision of society firmly root him within a prefigurative tradition (Honeywell, 2007). Freire’s pedagogy also contains elements of the

prefigurative (Mayo, 1999), as he does not believe that revolutionary, political education should wait to be implemented from above but rather at the

grassroots level in culture circles.

One recent example of attempting to form a community in line with Buber’s prefigurative vision is Neve Shalom, a community inhabited by Israeli and Palestinians. Feuerverger’s (2014) longitudinal ethnographic research on Neve Shalom shows people committing to live together, attend school

One recent example of attempting to form a community in line with Buber’s prefigurative vision is Neve Shalom, a community inhabited by Israeli and Palestinians. Feuerverger’s (2014) longitudinal ethnographic research on Neve Shalom shows people committing to live together, attend school