Traveling Beans

On Critical Consciousness, Being Critical, Critiquing...and Community

My first reaction to when someone promises to take me to a small festival in the early afternoon and then suddenly wants to keep me for lunch, all afternoon, dinner, and the evening... is to get really annoyed, creeped out, and guarded (actually I have reacted like that). However, after I remember the countless times that people have shown their hospitality that way --by going all out and giving me a full day with beautiful tours, great meals, and lots of attention-- I can't blame any one family or person. Especially after they have offered to help me find my family that I have not been in touch with for over 10 years. So when people spring sudden requests on me to come to their church and correct their pronunciation for their English Christmas play or when I am forced to take a picture as the honorary American (for an English extracurricular activity here that I have never once been to) I comply.

I can either be creeped out, sad, and then righteously angry at how English is elevated and therefore privileges me and many others...and then privileges white people even more so that --damn it-- racism and white privilege follows me here, too. I can be critical and point out how this all comes from U.S. neo-colonization after World War II, after Japan left, and under the guise of being a South Korean ally...that now English is an extension of U.S. neo-imperialism. Examples and traces what some see as innocuous and others as noxious: brands and advertisements are done in English so that the product or the company can be perceived as more modern, savvy, and hip vs. Korean writing which is considered "chunsooruhwoh" (cheesy or uncultured).

However, to put it all like that, in my opinion, is to be judgemental and critiquing. I hope a critical consciousness is more than seeing the problems in history, institutions, and power. I hope a critical consciousness includes understanding that the horrors and realities of then and now stand more chance of being transformed and created into something better when many activists release themselves from their own entrapping bi-polar analyses of oppression. Oppression, Oppression, Oppression, Oppression...Neo-colonization, Neo-imperialism, Sexism, Racism, Ableism...Yes, yes. It all exists...it's thrown in our faces here in Korea, in the U.S., in poor or written off communities anywhere. Of course, without such an analyses and critical distrust of information we are given, written off communities will just fall off. However, I think one vice of a lot of activists or anyone slightly privileged (which can even mean you're dirt poor, but you could have been lucky enough get a good education...like me) is this kind of intellectualized,waxed existential poetry. Sometimes when you just accept what you see as "oppression" --when you stop blaming the white man or the institution or unequal power or racism or history-- you will see how people around you actually transform it into something to some degree empowering or their own.

I'm not just being idealistic, I think I'm being more fair to people who suffer the worst of oppression. What good is analyzing history gonna do for people who have to rebuild their house right there after the hurricane? What good is to go over and over about U.S. imperialism when my students --and all Korean students-- are gonna still have to know English to get into college? So I lend my body and my face to take the picture with the third year students for the English extracurricular club class because it makes them happy and a little bit more excited for their next club class. I swallow my selfishness and go to the church and decide I will not yell at them while I try to fix their r's and l's. I will get to know them, have fun, and begin learning about their community. To say no out of principle because I think I am erasing their beautiful Korean tongues is to deny them what they need --which is to become more proficient at speaking English so they can communicate better and get to wherever they need...and hopefully they will find themselves communicating and mentoring others and building community.

That's not selling out. That's seeing reality and doing, not just waxing. Chapter 3 in Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed he starts off with some definitions:

words without action = verbalism
action without words = activism
words and action = praxis

But it's essential that the words + action are self-reflective. In a democratic community with dialogue --that has let go of entrapping bi-polarisms such as oppression and privilege, evil white man and poor colored person, privileged man and oppressed woman, because by fighting the other within these bi-polar frameworks, you yourself keep yourself in that "other" position-- self-reflection, mentoring, sharing knowledge, and education happens. Thus, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

So what am I doing other than waxing and being a damn academic myself? I'm trying my hardest to be a good teacher, be as honest and open and patient as possible even when I think my church has some sexist policies, even when elder male veneration makes me sick and see how it oppresses women...I give my time the way people ask me to give my time and I don't judge or tell them how they should do things instead. I have been discovering that by being a part of peoples' lives and letting them decide for themselves how to do it, I find my way into more and more intimate relationships so that I can take more active roles in transforming methods, procedures, and thoughts by just being a part of many small communities.

posted by jacquelina @ 4:24 PM