Aimé Césaire writes powerfully about the colonizer-colonized relationship, refuting the term “human contact” as a descriptor of that relationship. “Human contact” lacks any reference to the dialectical opposition between colonizer and colonized, where the former dominates the latter in order to exploit them. Instead, Césaire describes the colonizer-colonized relationship as “a classroom monitor… and an instrument of production” (Césaire, 177). This particular moment in “From Discourse on Colonialism” is particularly useful when considered in conversation with Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s writing on the importance of maintaining indigenous languages in the classroom and in literature. Thiong’o writes that the practice of teaching students exclusively in English (or any other colonial language) when that language is not used outside of school and has little to no connection to their culture initiates a deep alienation in a community that “distances… oneself from the reality around; [and promotes] identification with that which is most external to one’s environment” (Thiong’o, 451). Thiong’o describes how such linguistic alienation is enforced in the classroom through a culture of compulsory snitching and punishment (Thiong’o, 438). This practice builds psychic connections between one’s indigenous language and culture and punishment, and reinforces individualism rather than camaraderie, producing future controllable workers who will produce wealth for the colonizer while taking orders in the colonizer’s language, and who will sell out their comrades instead of revolting. Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal recognize that the classroom monitor/instrument of production relationship that is served by linguistic alienation destroys communities. Freire believes that education must produce greater consciousness in students so that they can become aware of, examine, and potentially change the oppressor-oppressed relationship that produces the latter as instruments of production. This education must be developed in dialogue with the oppressed, rather than through “banking education” which produces the teacher as a “classroom monitor,” to borrow Césaire’s image. Through dialogue, Freire hopes to create “education as the practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the practice of domination” (Freire, 81). Learning with Freire, Boal develops the “poetics of the oppressed” which hopes to train students not just to think and observe, but to act and to insert themselves as active participants in the world around them, rather than become mere “instruments of production.” For Boal, such training through theatrical exercises can become “a rehearsal for the revolution” (Boal, 98).
Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press, 2008. Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. "The Language of African Culture" Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. eds. Patrick Williams, and Laura Chrisman. 435-455. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Césaire, Aimé. "From Discourse on Colonialism" Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. eds. Patrick Williams, and Laura Chrisman. 172-180. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Freire, Paulo. "Introduction" Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000. 11-28. Print.