The Word and the World: The Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil by Lesley Bartlett (review)
- The Word and the World: The Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil by Lesley Bartlett
Lesley Bartlett
New Jersey: Hampton P, 2010. 232pp.
Lesley Bartlett’s The Word and the World offers CLJ readers a global, comparative perspective on Freirean-inspired community literacy work. Based on 27-months of ethnographic data collected in Brazilian literacy programs, Bartlett’s book constructively rethinks Freire’s critical literacy pedagogy in its native context as well as the so-called “consequences” of literacy in the larger context of development discourses engineered by international non-governmental organizations. Drawing on a feminist poststructural critique of power and socio-cultural theories of literacy, the book develops three major lines of argument: 1) literacy by itself does not create change; therefore, 2) any discussion of the impact of literacy must include consideration of the social contexts of literate practices and policies, and 3) the study of critical pedagogy as a situated practice reveals the limitations of Freirean praxis especially around issues of knowledge, power, and the limits of dialogue. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 reflect what Bartlett describes as the “ethnographic heart” of the book, a deeply qualitative analysis of literacy ideologies and praxis among teachers and students in one Brazilian community literacy program. From this analysis, Bartlett concludes that while Freirean critical literacy pedagogy has done much to expand a socio-cultural critique of literacy in people’s lives, the insistence among practitioners that critical literacy work will lead to people’s empowerment is teleological rather than actually transformative, and hence problematic. Ultimately, Bartlett argues for “new critical literacy studies,” as future work that will refresh Freirean critical literacy praxis by disrupting older, limiting notions of what local literacy is and does by carefully critiquing language inequality through power relations both in the classroom and beyond. Consequently The Word and the World has relevance for CLJ readers looking for a more global perspective, as Bartlett demonstrates how community literacy praxis does, can, and should evolve internationally. At the same time, this book is of particular relevance to literacy workers in the field given its discussion of the obstacles that local [End Page 96] educators face when they try to enact Freirean pedagogy.
As two reviewers with experience conducting ethnographic literacy research in international contexts, we engage in dialogue around The Word and the World below. By engaging in this dialogue we hope to address what is surprising and relevant about this work for other literacy researchers and scholars. The review considers three questions in light of our reading: What is Bartlett’s criticism of Freire? What is the most surprising aspect of her argument? How does this research inform community literacy?
What is Lesley Bartlett’s criticism of Freire?
Bartlett merely reads Freire “against the grain” through the lens of feminist poststructural theory and sociocultural theories of literacy. She is ever respectful of Freire’s enormous contributions to pedagogy and critical literacy and considers Freire almost a “saint.” Still she examines his pedagogy (which she argues is really more a philosophy or social theory than a teaching method) as an ideology, a system of ideas and beliefs, and then she proceeds to study the struggles that occur when his pedagogy is implemented by literacy educators in Brazil who are ostensibly trained in Freirean theories. I suspect that one thing Bartlett discovered in Brazil is also true of many educators in the US who use Paulo Freire—they are mostly familiar with his early work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and his ideas about problem-posing education and the banking concept of education. Most know little of his middle work (the talking books) or his later work such as Pedagogy of Hope, in which Freire reflects on the twenty years since Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published. In this later work, he cautions that he never intended Freirean pedagogy to become a methodology, and he argues that it is not just learning content that matters but also the understanding of the whys of the positions or places in which we find ourselves. Finally, it is the added...
