Emancipation through Contradictory Consciousness
The prevailing ideology of our times, while penetrates every aspect of our life as social and individual beings, fails to completely correspond to the experience of the ordinary people. This is because of their experiences of exploitation, poverty, lack of decent jobs, and the problems surrounding social justice. As a consequence, the ruling class’ grip on them, while far-reaching, is not whole. If there is something I am optimistic about our future in light of critical consciousness, this is because we imbibe such a thing which Gramsci called “contradictory consciousness”. For example, the exploited and marginalised groups reject some parts of the dominant ideology while they continue to subscribe to some parts of it. For instance, in societies where religion plays a key role, a worker may understand that there is inherently wrong about the way they are treated in their workplace (e.g. very low minimum wages, poor conditions at work) but they may hold reactionary attitudes on gender roles.
My classmate from a country in Central Asia discussed in our online forum how the ideas of Mezirow and Freire — particularly the ideas of transformation and critical reflection — can be dangerous to harbour or hold in public spaces, and I can see some parallels in my country, the Philippines. My country is democratic on paper. We take pride on the active status of citizen groups on protecting our civil liberties and make democracy work for us, but this is always at risk. I believe that educators like us have a stake in safeguarding the values we hold dear. After all, our vocation in education is at great risk if we do not take part in civic action.
But of course, this is better said than done. We all know that many people are harassed and punished for staying true to their principles. Perhaps we can find solace in Foucault, who was not ashamed in using the platform of university — which is part of the mainstream — in educating the public, while exposing the contradiction that takes place between trying to reach out to a huge number of people and the inaccessibility of the institutions of education because of the values imposed by capital, i.e. competition, excluding power of paper credentials, etc.
