Impasses on social formation: conservative thinking in Schwarz and Freire

Abstract

This paper intends to describe genesis of conservative thinking as a phenomenon of social formation. Then, literary criticism and education present themselves as important sources to analysis on the system of national formation. The Roberto Schwarz’ essay “As ideias fora do lugar” [“Ideas out of own place”] presents the question of conservative thinking. The author analyses the genesis of national conservatism by the free labor, which is very important to Machado de Assis’ works. It represents the submission to the order of the favors and the social composition of the clientelism submitted to the ruling classes. Moreover, Paulo Freire’s pedagogy underlines the Conservative thinking from the perspective of the oppressed people. From the moment when real contradictions appear to the oppressed people, critical consciousness can emerge as well as fanatical consciousness as sustained by the power of the silence and violence proper to the Conservatism. Therefore, Conservative thinking reflects the impasses on social formation under the perspective of the master or by the condition of oppressed. At the end, we have a final question: how to intervene from these aesthetical-politics and pedagogical diagnosis as described by Schwarz and Freire respectively?