A Theoretical Promise: (Child) Consciousness
The master-slave dialectic is a section of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit seeking to demonstrate the possibility of acquiring absolute knowledge. Within the contents of the section, Hegel explicates a demonstrative process of consciousness that critiques its knowledge of the world that surrounds it by following a particular procedure: the dialectic of experience. The dialectic of experience, Hegel believes, will eventually bring consciousness to a state of absolute knowing; arguing it to be a natural process in which consciousness puts in place a standard of truth, a conception of the world as it is in truth, and does this initially without any form of external input, (Hegel, 1977). According to Hegel, this process will repeat until consciousness has attained absolute knowing; thus, the dialectic of experience is an education and pedagogical experience. Hegel further asserts the dialect of experience leads consciousness to view the world as a nullity that exists solely for consciousness’ consumption (§174). The cartesian/colonial logics behind the dialectic of experience leads self-consciousness into understanding true satisfaction as mutual recognition, engendering the Master-slave dialectic, an account that necessitates struggle and confrontation in order for its very production (§185).
In the discipline of Education, Hegel’s Master-slave dialectic’s most notable impact is depicted in Freire’s first chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.. In analyzing social dynamics between the oppressors and the oppressed in contemporary society, Freire notes the project of dehumanization as a “distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human,” (p. 44; 1970). Freire will argue that dehumanization is a historical human condition that will continue without end unless the oppressed “liberate themselves and the oppressors” through utilizing dialogue to become political agents (p. 44; 1970). Critical consciousness, according to Freire, is fully developed when the oppressed understand that praxis must follow their process of dialogue (p. 45; 1970). Racial critique of existentialist philosophy is an important thread, as for Fanon, de Beauvoir’s assertion that limited autonomy is solely restricted to childhood experiences (2018), further aids to the fungible positioning of Black individuals (p. 95; 2019). It is through colonial logics and within a colonized society, Fanon asserts, that he has been positioned in a world that presupposes his nature, declaring him irrational, hostile, and unworthy of recognition as an individual (p. 95; 2019).
Interwoven into the existentialist philosophical argument of humanity, rebellion, and the interrelationship of autonomy and responsibility as depicted by de Beauvoir and challenged by Fanon is the interrelationship between deficit ideologies of Latine/x youth and combatting deficit ideological frameworks as well as the materialization of violence within K-12 settler colonial institutions that render Latine/x youth as deficit (Moll et. al., 1992; Stanton-Salazar 1997; Valencia 1997, 2010; Valenzuela 1999; Volpp 2000; Gonzales et al. 2001; Yosso 2005; Conchas 2006; Rendón et al., 2014; Zambrana & Gándara 2015). De Beauvoir’s work grammatically positions children within the context of Western thought in the context of development, maturity, and growth--all from the perspective of the adult, in similar fashion that, through white consciousness, Fanon critiques the colonial positioning of the Black individual. Further depicted in this philosophical dispute concerning humanism is an underlying critique of western language as inherently violent due to colonial logics and colonization, as “aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instill in the exploited a mood for submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of the law and order,” (p. 3-4; 2017). Fanon’s interdisciplinary critique demonstrates a connection which depicts K-12 institutions as spaces/places materializing the difference between freedom as a fundamental universal and a differential praxis, and further positions child consciousness in sameness with Black consciousness in that it is positioned to navigate a world that has already presupposed its inferiority and, consequently, its needed annihilation.
In the History of Geography section of my MA research, I stated that civil rights activists working in the fields emerged from the Valley. It is from this research that my theoretical promise has emerged. My new research is guided by my theoretical promise that demonstrates a triangular visualization of a historical, spiritual, and environmental account of child consciousness. Through this framework, my dissertation aims at tracing the ways child consciousness aids in a particular form of organization that is absent from cartesian logic despite the presence of colonial position. The current backbone of my theoretical framework aims to demonstrate a pedagogical dialogue between elder and child consciousness that is materially depicted through the ways older generations teach children how to work in the fields. The development of this promise is important to my ongoing research, as I believe it will assist me in my plan to explore a new understanding of the development of child consciousness, one that centers the geographical landscape and imagination of a child, attending to that new created space between the dialogue of elder and child consciousness that is as pedagogical as it is inventive. In the context of education, my theoretical framework aims to assist K-12 researchers in understanding the changing positioning of adolescents in historically extracted communities that have been taught ethnic studies in their classrooms by teachers who have been taught by decolonial scholars in their own educational experiences.
