On the Pedagogical Turn in Latin American Social Movements

The role of the pedagogical is increasingly important in the construction of new forms of anticapitalist politics in Latin America. This is evidenced by the centrality of popular education and other forms of struggle influenced by radical education philosophy and pedagogy, and by social movements in their construction of new forms of participatory politics and mass intellectuality. It is also evidenced in the creation of formal and informal educational programs, practices and projects that develop varieties of critical pedagogy and popular education with both organized and nonorganized marginalized and excluded communities. Such a multiplicity and plurality of practices challenge many of the taken for granted assumptions about the nature of revolutionary struggle and revolutionary subjects, and the meaning and objectives of such struggle. They suggest the need for self-reflection and renovation within Marxist political categories so that they can maintain their relevance and relationship with the popular struggles and subjects at the heart of the creation of multiple pathways to twenty-first-century socialism (21 cs) in the region