Is there room for Paulo Freire's 'pedagogy of the oppressed' in the postmodern era? A dialogue among undocumented Mexican women, Paulo Freire's philosophic work and postmodernism.

摘要

This is a qualitative study of the discourses of the undocumented Mexican women living in Southern California and the Southwest borderlands and border fences. Claudia Correa dialogued with more than 250 undocumented people between June 2004 and the winter of 2007. This study presents excerpts of a dialogue interview with anti-deportation demonstrators present at MacArthur Park, Downtown Los Angeles, where a clash between the LAPD and the undocumented people took place on May 1, 2007. Also, a dialogue with two people smugglers (coyotes) is presented in this study. This study is a philosophical, critical dialogue among the worldviews of the undocumented Mexican women, Neo-Marxist, critical pedagogy philosopher Paulo Freire, and postmodernists Jacques Derrida, postfeminist Sandra Harding, Jean Baudrillard, Richard Rorty, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Rolland Barthes, and Michel Foucault. The undocumented people live in a faceless, nameless, invisible reality in the virtual, multidivided, relativistic postmodern age. This study unveils some of the layers of this "invisible" reality. The research findings are fascinating and insightful to help understand the intricate underground structures facilitating and/or profiting from illegal immigration in Mexico and in the United States. This study also validates Freire's dialogic praxis as a method of qualitative research in the postmodern age.