Rethinking an "English Only" Freire

Lucas Rossi Corcoran, San Diego State University Imperial Valley

(Published January 26, 2023)

Abstract: Despite the influence of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in North American academic circles, to my knowledge, there has been no significant attempt to rethink the 1970 Myra Bergman Ramos English translation. In this article, I address one aspect of this issue, by attending to how the words ser and estar are rhetorically figured in the Paz e Terra edition of Pedagogia do oprimido. Employing a comparative rhetorical methodology, I investigate how Freire deploys the indexed semantics of ser and estar to illustrate contrasting forms of ontology—one based in decontextualized "essence" (ser) and the other in contextual happenings in historical temporalities and geopolitical spaces (estar). By investigating the rhetorics of these ontologies, I challenge “English only” readings that commit Freire to a singular ontology. Based in the figure of estar, Freire's rhetoric holds no ontological commitments to how folks and things must "be." Rather, Freire's rhetoric gestures towards methods for revealing geopolitically and historically situated realities.

Key Words: Freire, Ontology, Latin American Rhetoric, Comparative Rhetoric 

Introduction

The influence of Paulo Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed in anglophone U.S. academic circles is difficult to overstate. In the latter half of the 20th century, Freirean critical pedagogy altered the trajectory of educational practices at most institutional levels and left a lasting impression on the field of rhetorical studies. Given Freire's far-reaching influence, it is also noteworthy to register that, since the 1970 publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in English, no attempt has been made to update the translation or re-edit the edition, beyond including (now dated) inclusive language for referring to people. Moreover, since its publication, there has been—to my knowledge—no significant research in anglophone U.S. scholarship on Pedagogy of the Oppressed or Freire's rhetoric in general that reads and interprets Freire's Portuguese texts.

This last point is especially remarkable, given Freire's linguistic and rhetorical dexterity, fascination with the Latin etymology of Portuguese, and tendency for literary and philosophical allusions. If Freire were a so-called philosophical, literary, or rhetorical writer (instead of a pedagogical one), such an absence of critical scholarship that looks to Freire’s words outside of English translation might indeed be more obvious. In other text-based disciplines, scholars often attend to conceptually conveying (even if not linguistically) the sense of influential writers’ key terms or turns of phrase that are lost in translation. Perhaps because of the putative practical nature of the field of pedagogy, Freire's Portuguese writings and the key terms of Pedagogia do Oprimido have not been investigated with a similar attention to detail. This essay challenges this history of an "English-only" Freire through a series of readings of passages where the words ser and estar figure prominently in the Paz e Terra edition (2013) of Pedagogia do Oprimido. These readings do not focus on mere linguistic differences between idioms. Rather, they focus on highlighting the discursive correlatives that place Freire’s rhetoric in dialogue with other Latin American rhetorics and notable currents in 20thcentury continental thought.

My work investigates Freire's constant rhetorical differentiation between the words ser and estar, words that often appear for predicating attributes and location in Iberian Romance languages (including Portuguese and Spanish). As is well known, these words have no obvious  correlative in other named European national languages, like French, German, or English. Any translation of Portuguese or Spanish to English most often has to translate both words, ser and estar, as a form of the word "to be." In many cases, the necessity of such a translation is unproblematic. However, as I explain below, Freire employs the semantics of ser and estar as a central rhetorical figure in contrasting two competing visions of ontology, one based in static “is-ness,” and another based in being as an on-going happening. Throughout Pedagogia do oprimido, Freire, I argue, employs a rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction that suggests a compelling analogy with the writings of a contemporary of Freire, 20th-century Argentine cultural anthropologist and philosopher, Rodolfo Kusch. Much like Freire’s, Kusch’s rhetoric emphasizes the semantics of ser and estar to challenge decontextualized and dehistoricized notions of essence emblematic of the ontological tradition in philosophy.

 Broadly, it could be said that Freire's rhetoric is based fundamentally in what I call an ontology of estar. This form of “being” indexes the semantics of the word estar and is centered in contextualized and temporalized characteristics, attributes, states and locations. This ontology of estar challenges what I also call an ontology of ser. This form of “being” indexes the semantics of the word ser which is centered on essentialized and permanent traits, what something is regardless of context. I argue that the distinction between these two ontologies is a requisite discursive background for understanding nearly all other arguments in Pedagogia do oprimido.

Perhaps the clearest way to picture such distinction between an ontology of ser and the ontology of estar is to borrow from the distinction that Martin Heidegger makes in Sein und Zeit between “ready-to-hand” (Zuhandenheit) and “present-to-hand” (Vorhandenheit). As is well documented, Heidegger critiques the ontological tradition for solely concerning itself with being in its decontextualized forms—that is, “present-to-hand” forms of being (cf. Dreyfus). I contend that, like Heidegger, Freire challenges this form of decontextualized being by considering being as a locative and temporal happening. Analogous to Heidegger as well, Freire’s rhetoric challenges what I refer to throughout this essay as the traditional ontological priority. Much more a terministic screen than a set of explicit doctrines, such an ontological priority holds that i) there are folks and things, then that (ii) folks and things are what folks and things are, and, finally, that iii) folks and things are how, when, and where they are. In a schematic, this priority would be i) existence, ii) essence, iii) and modality. As I intend to show below, Freire’s rhetoric reverses this priority. For Freire’s ontology of estar, one could argue that ontological priority consists first in i) modality, then in ii) essence, and finally in iii) existence.

This essay forwards the thesis that there is no singular ontology in Pedagogia do oprimido. Freire holds no singular commitments to how folks and the world must be. There is no delineation of a set of essential attributes that would make up this "is-ness." Rather, Freire’s rhetoric outlines a type of pedagogy based in an ontology of estar that promotes the revelation of ontologies in the plural and the critical reflections on these ontologies' constitutive and dialogic relations that constitute folks and their worlds.

With these ideas in view, I first outline a comparative rhetorical framework as my reading strategy. Second, I review the ser-estar distinction in Kuschian rhetoric to illustrate by conceptual analogy how Freire’s rhetoric employs the ser-estar distinction to elucidate the contrasting ontologies. Third, I discuss some of the important aspects of the publication history of Pedagogia do oprimido and its English translation. Fourth, I turn to a series of readings of the Paz e Terra edition of Pedagogia do oprimido along with the English translations of these passages. Finally, I offer some concluding remarks regarding Freire's employment of the words ser and estar in Pedagogia do oprimido, outlining possibilities for future scholarship.

Comparative Rhetoric and Latin American Rhetorical Studies

For its methodology, this essay integrates conversations in comparative rhetoric. Broadly, comparative rhetoric acknowledges and attempts to understand discourses that are not often situated within the rhetorical canon. Comparative rhetoric studies fosters “openness to new definitions, methods, and understandings of ourselves and our cultures, critical awareness of the ethics of speaking, and dialogic engagement with other rhetorics” (Hum and Lyon 162). Comparative rhetoric does not seek to discover a utopian “truth” or a perfect representation of a culture. Rather, it engages in what LuMing Mao et al. title the “art of recontextualization.” They suggest that, although comparative rhetoric "does regularly call attention to local terms, meanings, and contexts, it does not mean at all that valuing or embracing them would lead us to a promised land where true representations of the other triumph over contingencies or instabilities'' (242). As a reading strategy, comparative rhetoric does not find a singular signification for a text. Rather, it highlights differences and possibilities for new interpretations by placing concepts and idioms in conversation with one another.

My work also responds to Susan Romano’s call for scholars of Latin American rhetorics to "construct and calibrate relationships across divides, to honor heterogeneity, and to use documentary limitations and imbalances as springboards to ethical awareness and innovative practice" (408). Through examining Freire's rhetoric in particular, my arguments align with the call from Christa J. Olson and René Agustín De los Santos to conceptualize the study of rhetoric in the Americas as a framework that "displaces the familiar terms centering American rhetoric in the United States and resists an otherwise often overpowering tendency to see American rhetorical practices in isolation" (194). Looking at Freire in this light strikes a chord with what De los Santos elsewhere sees as the trajectory of Latin American rhetorical studies, "which can encourage scholars to pay closer attention to dialectics between US and American communicative practices, and examine how these practices have developed over time and place" (322). In comparing the Paz e Terra edition of Pedagogia do oprimido with the Ramos translation, I attend to such dialectics, noting how Freire’s texts and translations might comprise a hemispheric rhetorical exchange.

As a work in comparative rhetoric, my argument eschews any premise of linguistic essentialism. This essay centers on understanding how the words ser and estar circulate as tropes in Freire's writing and how such words might index rhetorical effect. I do not argue that Freire is making a point about the semantics of the words ser and estar. Rather, I claim that Freire deploys the semantics of the words ser and estar to make a point. In this sense, my work tracks the rhetorical figuration of these words rather than attempting to recover their linguistic essence.

The Ser-Estar Distinction

For speakers not used to making the ser-estar distinction, learning it can be difficult—a fact demonstrated by the voluminous language-learning resources written on the subject . Whereas in some named European national languages (like English, French, and German, for example) one verb might express all forms of attribute predication as well as location attribution, some Latin-derivative named national languages from the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese and Spanish in the case of this essay) often assign the semantics of different forms of predication as well as location attribution to different words. At the most general level, the "standard" account of the difference between the words ser and estar could be formulated as follows: sentences with ser predicate permanent attributes to their grammatical subject, and sentences with estar predicate temporary or contextual attributes (including location) to their grammatical subject. A helpful trick for thinking about the different valences of ser and estar is to consider the words' respective etymologies. Ser comes from an amalgamation of the Latin sedere ("to sit or to seat”) and esse ("to be ''), while estar comes from the Latin stare ("to stand"). So, when something is (es / é = ser) F, it has been "set down" as F. On the other hand, when something is (está = estar) F or at F, it "stands" as F or at F.[i] With these etymologies in mind, Luis Crespo contends that the semantics of estar can be translated conceptually with certain usages of the English "to stand,” and that the semantics of ser can be mapped onto the "traditional" forms of predication used with the English "to be.” Crespo thinks that somewhat antiquated phrases like "I stand in danger," "I stand in doubt," or "I stand guard" effectively demonstrate the range of the word estar, while placing the word ser along the same general lines as "to be” to denote more-or-less decontextualized traits.[ii] In a word: whereas "Fire is (é / es = ser) hot" because it is an essential characteristic of what makes fire fire, "the embers are (están = estar) still hot," because the fire was recently put out; whereas "pizza is (é / es = ser) delicious" because it is one of your favorite foods, "this pizza is (está = estar) delicious" because at this particular moment at this particular pizzeria it was made just right.

Having two possible ways for talking about attributes—one form for permanent attributes and one form for temporary, contextual, and locative ones—sparks philosophical interest. Rodolfo Kusch is perhaps the most well-known thinker to rhetorically figure the word estar as denoting a distinct form of existence in Latin America that challenges abstract and an essentialized forms of being, particularly those denoted by the word ser. For Kusch, "ser marks a relation between subject and object as definable, fixed, having an essence, ordered in relations of cause and effect.” And, on the other hand, estar "situates one within the world, where one senses its volatility, its mutability, [and] its instability" (Lugones and Price, lvi). An indicator of how things are in context, instead of what things are regardless of context, the word estar in Kusch’s rhetoric represents a type of being rooted in historical time and geopolitical space. As Alejandro A. Vallega explains, for Kusch, approaching the ontological tension indexed by the words ser and estar means that the issue "is not there is a 'what' that must be analyzed, comprehended, and manipulated better; rather the issue is 'how' one engages in existence, the disposition or modality of estar, out of which and through which one comes to be (ser) this or that'' (69). Indeed, the situated being suggested by the semantics of estar challenges the terministic screen of traditional ontological priority, which sees an item's or a person's "essence" as precisely that which is regardless of circumstance. As Kusch notes, "estar implies the lack of essences, and, therefore, makes the subject fall, temporarily but effectively, to the level of circumstances [my translation]" (48). By focusing on the contextual being that the word estar might suggest, ontologies in the vein of Kusch depict the impossibility of disambiguating ontologically general questions regarding who folks and what things are from ontologically specific questions of how folks and things are, where they are, and when they are.

It is important for the rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction to consider another linguistic consideration. In Portuguese and Spanish, progressive aspect is constructed by a conjugated form of estar and the progressive participle of a verb. As opposed to simple aspect, progressive aspect demonstrates ongoing activity, the difference between "they play tennis (in general)" and "they are playing tennis (at the moment).” The distinction between simple and progressive aspect reveals another dimension of the rhetorical figuration of the words ser and estar in Kuschian rhetorics . Enrique Del Percio points out that the terministic screen of traditional ontological priority is obsessed with "is-ness," who and what folks and things are outside of local context and historical time. This preoccupation is an entailment of ser in simple aspect. Conversely, certain Latin American rhetorics following Kusch begin with a different ontological basis, ser in its progressive aspect. The linguistic construction of the word ser in progressive aspect (the progressive participle of ser plus a conjugated form of estar) generates the rhetorical possibility of figuring any perception of static “is-ness” as an on-going happening dependent on an ontology of estar. Del Percio describes the difference between ser in simple aspect and estar siendo in progressive aspect as such: "It is not about the ground/fundament on which we are [en el que somos = ser simple aspect] (which would lead us to an essentialist thought) but the ground on which we are being [en el que estamos siendo = estar siendo progressive or continuous aspect], a ground without which there would not be any possible relation with others and the cosmos [translation slightly modified]" (162). This "ground" (fundamento) for being upon which estar siendo occurs depicts the "essence" of folks and things as happening in located historical time and geopolitical space. What folks and things “are” (ser in simple aspect) is seen as derivative of what, where, how, and when things “are being” in context (estar siendo in progressive aspect).

One can summarize the above in a few key takeaways. First, based on the semantics of the words, ser can depict a form of decontextualized being where folks and things are what they are regardless of place and time, and estar can depict a type of contextualized being where folks and things are what they are in virtue of a constitutive connection with place and time. Second, rhetorics in the vein of Kusch emphasize what I count as a reversal of the terministic screen of traditional ontological priority, where, put broadly, that folks and things are and what folks and things are prior to how, where, and when folks and things are. An ontology of estar reverses such a priority, making what is derivative of how, where, and when someone or something is. Third, the reversal of this terministic screen includes an emphasis on being's constitutive relation to place and to time and also leads to another emphasis on temporality. Being as an activity in p\e aspect is illustrated as the ground upon which being in simple aspect as an “is-ness” can be derived. As I show below, Freire repeatedly emphasizes that, for someone or something to be (ser), they need "to be being" (estar sendo) in the "world" (no mundo) or in a form of "situationality" (situacionalidade).

The Beginnings of an “English only” Freire: Publication and Translation history of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Due to political considerations in Brazil, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (originally drafted by Freire in Portuguese) was first published in Spanish in 1968—where the ser-estar distinction characteristic of the Portuguese text is maintained. Then, the book was published in English in 1970, before finally being published in Portuguese in Brazil in 1975. The Myra Bergman Ramos translation is the only translation of the text in English, and the translation has not been significantly modified since its original 1970 publication. In an interview, Ramos reflects on the translation: "At that time, I didn't have much of an idea of the translation I had made. It could be said that I was an accidental translator of a seminal work [my translation]" (369). Beyond Pedagogia do oprimido, Ramos translated Educação Como Prática da Liberdade and the preface to Extensão ou Comunicação? Both of these translations were published together as Education for Critical Consciousness by Continuum Publishing in 1973 (Ramos 374). Beyond these texts from Freire, Ramos did not work as a professional translator (Ramos 373), and the English translation of Pedagogia do oprimido was produced from a manuscript from Freire, which, now, Ramos cannot find (Ramos 368).[iii] Given the circulation of Pedagogy of Oppressed in English, the Ramos translation for many is Freire's voice, and it is this text that has seemingly generated all things “Freirean” in the anglophone U.S. context—despite Ramos's own recognition of the "accidental" nature of the translation.

By my count, the Paz e Terra edition of Pedagogia do oprimido contains thirteen instances where Freire distinguishes between ser and estar with italics or emphasizes estar sendo with italics. The Ramos translation mostly gives either a form of "to become'' or "to exist" for estar sendo, rarely including the italics or maintaining the progressive aspect found in the Paz e Terra edition. Clearly, rendering Freire's repeated rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction and estar sendo presented a difficult translation problem.

Although one might consider estar sendo as a merely linguistic facet of the text, a cursory scan of Freire's collected writings reveals that Freire continually and rhetorically figures estar sendo, contrasting it with simple aspect inflections of the word ser. Freire’s quote, "O Mundo não é. Está sendo (The world is not [é = ser].The world is being [está sendo = estar sendo])" (Freire Pedagogia da Autonomia 2.8) appears to be a frequently cited Freirean phrase, appearing as an epigraph in different scholarly works and articles. Ser, estar, and estar sendo are crucial, I argue, for understanding Freire’s rhetoric. This semantic network presents an under-investigated point for understanding Freire’s ontology and how it forms the background of the other arguments in Pedagogia do oprimido.

Estar Sendo in Pedagogia do oprimido

Although preliminary research reveals little extended and focused treatment of Freire’s rhetorical deployment of estar sendo, secondary literature mentions that the overtones of Kusch’s rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction are present in readings of Freire’s rhetoric. As Norma Beatriz López Medero notes, Freire's work constantly suggests that: "It is necessary to reconsider historic reality as a process, as a 'to be being' [estar siendo], picturing it as a constant development and not as something static—rebelling against stagnation, working to recuperate the ability to signify the world [my translation]" (120). The rhetorical figure of estar sendo suggests the Freirean premise that worlds and histories are conditioned through the agency of collective action inasmuch as this agency is conditioned through worlds and histories. Being is constitutively linked to action to such an extent that being itself is a historically and geographically situated happening. Celso Ilgo Henz picks up this thread of estar sendo, seeing the existential model that it suggests as a basic aspect of Freirean ontology: folks "are being [estão sendo] in a world and a history as well of construction and reconstruction [my translation]" (para. 2). The progressive aspect of present tense being carries the stress—what "is" is as such because it is constantly being made and remade. Andrea Rodrigues Barbosa Marinho makes the compelling suggestion that the word "ontology" itself, to the extent that it is exclusively concerned with the being of "is-ness" (ser in the simple aspect), is incapable of depicting the sense of being that is manifested in estar sendo. To address this, Marinho offers the compelling neologism “ontagerelogy" (onto = being / agere = to act / logos) as a more effective semantic designation for understanding Freire's sense of being as an action (163).

Below, I turn to readings of passages where a form of estar sendo is italicized in Pedagogia do oprimido. The goal of my readings is not to demonstrate a singular interpretation of the function of estar sendo in Freire's rhetoric. Rather, it is to establish a generative tension in Freire’s scholarship, pointing to new possibilities of reading his work that might have been overlooked linguistically, conceptually, and rhetorically.

Selections from Pedagogia do oprimido

The first selection does not include estar sendo directly. However, Freire's italicized use of ser and estar evokes a clear critique of the terministic screen of traditional ontological priority that sees what folks and things are as prior to how (also when and where) they are. Throughout, I quote (in blocks when needed) the Paz e Terra edition and then the Ramos translation. Freire writes:

Sendo os homens seres em "situação", se encontram enraizados em condições tempo-espaciais que os marcam e a que eles igualmente marcam. Sua tendência é refletir sobre sua própria situacionalidade, na medida em que, desafiados por ela, agem sobre ela. Esta reflexão implica, por isto mesmo, algo mais que estar em situacionalidade, que é a sua posição fundamental. Os homens são porque estão em situação. E serão tanto mais quanto não só pensem criticamente sobre sua forma de estar, mas criticamente atuem sobre a situação em que estão. (125)

The Ramos translation of this passage reads:

People, as beings "in a situation," find themselves rooted in temporal-spatial conditions which mark them and which they also mark. They will tend to reflect on their own "situationality" to the extent that they are challenged by it to act upon it. Human beings are because they are in a situation. And they will be more the more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically act upon it. (109)

Here the translation, to a certain extent, effectively deals with the italics in the Paz e Terra edition. However, the important point that Freire makes by prioritizing estar em situação over ser, which, in so doing, makes estar em stiuação the basis of ser, is lost in the Ramos text. In this excerpt, Freire's thinking bears a close affinity with an ontology of estar that is analogous with the rhetoric of Kusch. "Being-in-situationality" (estar em situacionalidade) is the primary given that is prior to any form of decontextualized attribution of “essence.” It is also important to note that, whereas the Ramos translation reads, "critically reflect upon their existence [italics added]," the Paz e Terra edition reads "thinking critically over their form of being [estar] [italics in the original] [my translation].” Without further remark or a translator's note, "existence" can readily connotate "essence" or "substance"—that which “is” (ser) regardless of context (which is precisely the opposite valence of Freire's estar in this passage). "Existence" unqualified does little to show that what folks need to think critically about is their form of being (estar) and what they need to act upon is the situation (situação) in which they "are" (estar) historically and temporally. Without these nuances, the dialectical relationship between “being” (estar), “situation” (situação), and "being" (ser) is missed, where one's form of “being” (forma de estar) constitutes and is constituted by the historical and geopolitical here and now, and that form of “being” (forma de estar) is the basis of any permanent "essence" (ser).

In the above passage, Freire manifestly gives priority to estar as the basis for ser, an important concept to keep in mind in investigating Freire's employment of the phrase estar sendo through Pedagogia do oprimido. One of the most direct rhetorical figurations between ser and estar sendo that Freire makes occurs near the end of the book:

Isto é o que explica a estrutura social, para ser; tenha que estar sendo ou, em outras palavras: estar sendo é o modo que tem a estrutura social de durar, na acepção bergsoniana do termo. (218) 

The Ramos translation reads:

The social structure, in order to be, must become; in other words, becoming is the way the social structure expresses "duration," in the Bergonsian sense of term. (179).

In the Paz e Terra edition, Freire demonstrates a constitutive relation between ser (presumably in the simple aspect) and estar sendo (progressive aspect). A “literal” translation of the sentence would read, however awkwardly, something like this: "In order for the social structure to be (ser), it must be being (estar sendo)." Translating estar sendo here as "become" misses the point. No relation in this translation suggests that the "is-ness" of the social structure (ser in the simple aspect) is ontologically dependent on being as a happening, that is, estar sendo in the progressive aspect.[iv] To illustrate this point, consider the following example. One "becomes" a doctor after attending medical school; whereas one was once not a doctor, now one is a doctor. However, the sense that Freire suggests in this passage is closer to the idea that one “is” a doctor, only when one “is being” a doctor. That is, one “is” a doctor (simple aspect connoting a permanent attribute), insofar that one “is being” a doctor at a given time and place (progressive aspect connoting a happening). The activity of "being a doctor" also points to the "world" (hospitals, patients, degrees, tests, waiting rooms, etc.) that must be there for one to be ”being a doctor“ at a time and place. Therefore, the "social structure" "is" because it “is being” in the same sense that one "is" a doctor because one “is being” a doctor in a world. The "social structure" is not becoming. Rather, it is happening. And whatever its essence might "be" is a result of this happening.

The following passage demonstrates the same relation between ser and estar sendo. Here again, the Ramos translation chooses the word "become" to translate estar sendo. In critiquing the banking model of education, Freire writes:

Desta maneira, a educação se re-faz constantemente na práxis. Para ser tem que estar sendo. Sua "duração" — no sentido bergsoniano do termo —, como processo, está no jogo dos contrários permanência-mudança. (91)

The Ramos translation reads:

Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it must become. Its "duration" (in the Bergonsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of the opposites permanence and change. (84).

Relating "to be" with "to become" misses the semantic connection between ser and estar sendo. As such, the translation misinterprets a crucial point about Freirean pedagogy. Education “is being” constantly in the same way that the social structure “is being” constantly. Education is making (and remaking) its essence in reference to its time and place. In a similar way that the phrase "one is being a doctor" prompts reflection on the "world" where a doctor is being a doctor and how the structure of this world (along with the doctor's being in it) constructs the "is-ness" of a doctor, the phrase "education is being (estar sendo)" invites consideration of the world where education is happening, and how the world, combined with education's being in it, contributes to education's essence.

When estar sendo is attributed to people, the phrase is frequently found in some collocation with mundo ("world"). For example: "In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist [estão sendo] in the world [no mundo] with which and in which they find themselves" (89 / 83). On the same page is the same collocation: "Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world [estão sendo no mundo]" (89 / 83). In both these cases, the Ramos translation chooses “to exist” (in simple aspect) to translate estar sendo in progressive aspect.

The problem with “to exist” is seen in the following passage. An ontological correlation between ser, estar sendo, mundo, and existir is seen in Chapter Three:

Daí em diante, este ser, que desta forma, atua e que, necessariamente, é um ser consciência de si, um ser "para si", não poderia ser, se não estivesse sendo, no mundo com o qual está, como também este mundo não existiria, se este ser não existisse. (114)

The Ramos Translation reads:

A being capable of such production (who thereby is necessarily aware of himself [sic], is a “being for himself [sic]”) could no longer be if she or he [sic] were not in the process of being in the world with which he or she [sic] relates; just as the world would no longer exist if this being did not exist. (100)

It is interesting to note here, given the importance of the passage at (125 / 109) that Freire uses "exist" (existir) in its most general sense to differentiate between there being "something" and there being "nothing.” As illustrated in the previous example, here is an ontological correlation between "is-ness" (ser simple aspect) and "to be being" (estar sendo progressive aspect). Freire again reverses the terministic screen of traditional ontological priority, by making estar sendo (progressive aspect) the primary given and "is-ness" (ser simple aspect) the ossified derivative of it. For there to be folks or a world at all (for them to “exist” or for there to be "something" rather than "nothing") first "there must be" estar sendo. Freire’s reversal of the terministic screen of the traditional ontological priority is keenly noted in this passage. Such a terministic screen might stress that first there are things; second, that things are what they are (regardless of context in simple aspect); and, finally, that things are being how (when and where in progressive continuous aspect) they are in a given space and time. Freire's rhetoric cleverly reverses the entire order: first, this ontology sees that things are being what (how, when and, where in progressive aspect) they are in a given space and time; then, they are what they are (regardless of context in simple aspect); and, finally, they merely are (instead of are not).

As a result, for Freire, "oppression" is the attempt to deny folks and their worlds the progressive aspect of being—that is, to deny folks and their worlds their estar sendo. In this oppressive denial, folks and worlds are coerced into a mere, static "is-ness" (ser in the simple aspect) that, at the same time, denies any form of dynamic or radical possibility. Conversely, "freedom" is the revelation and encouragement of the being of folks and worlds as an ongoing happening, an ontological frame that sees being in the progressive aspect and as occurring in historical time and geopolitical place. Given these implications, it seems, then, that the ser-estar distinction is far beyond a "mere" question of linguistics. A preliminary investigation of the rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction in the Paz e Terra edition of Pedagogia do oprimido reveals that the semantic dialogue between ser and estar is crucial to understanding Freire's rhetoric. Furthermore, standing in the tension between ser and estar is imperative for appreciating Freire's ontology without truncating it to fit within the terministic screen of traditional ontological priority. 

Conclusion

This essay establishes a generative tension in anglophone U.S. scholarship on Freire. By looking toward the Paz e Terra edition of Pedagogia do oprimido and comparing it to the highly influential and extensively circulated 1970 Ramos translation of the same work, I employ a comparative rhetoric methodology to trace the rhetorical figuration of the words ser and estar across linguistic idioms and conceptual schema. I do not attempt to provide the final word on how Freire’s rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction should be read. Rather, I highlight this feature of Freire's rhetoric, casting light on the possibilities it might hold for future scholarship, while at the same time challenging the prevalence of an “English only” Freire in anglophone U.S. academic settings. An investigation of Freire's collected writing might be in order to see the effect of the ser-estar distinction in Freire’s rhetoric and to what extent the trope is central to Freire's thinking. However, I hypothesize that the ser-estar distinction and its possible connection with other Latin American rhetorics might be fundamental to reading Freire. A nuanced understanding of Freire's ontology of estar might very well yield new interpretations and applications of Freire’s rhetoric.

However, I think that the above observations on Freire's rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction lead out to some preliminary insights. First, Freire's repeated emphasis on estar sendo as the primary given of all ontological architectures belies attempts to commit Freire to an ontology (in the singular). At the core of Freire's rhetoric is not any particular worldview that must be the case or must be. Rather, I contend that Freire primarily outlines a method for revealing and dialoguing with ontologies (in the plural) that are site specific to their historical times and geopolitical places. As Freire's primary ontological given, the phrase estar sendo thwarts the possibility of knowing what folks and things are outside of their contextualized how, when, and where they are being as a happening. Although Freire's ontology of estar, no doubt, introduces an a priori, this a priori holds no ontological commitments beyond the dialogic revelation of being as a happening as the primary "there is-ness" of all other forms of being. If this holds true, then Freire's rhetoric demonstrates parallels with rhetorics in the vein of Rodolfo Kusch—parallels, which, to my understanding, have been largely under-investigated in anglophone U.S. scholarship.

The ser-estar distinction is rhetorically and philosophically rich. It poses questions around existence and being that puts thinkers who deploy the distinction in dialogue with some of the most influential currents of 20thcentury continental thought. There is clear work to be done investigating how Freire's ontology of estar—and its resulting "hermeneutics of facticity"—might dialogue with Heidegger's extensive writings on being. My hypothesis, articulated above, also shows how Freire's emphasis on "ontologies'' and what I take to be Freire's sole delineation of a method for revealing such ontologies bears a striking similarity with the work of later Wittgenstein and the "third wave" (one might say) Wittgensteinians, who following Gordon Baker, see Wittgenstein's work in the Philosophical Investigations as solely the revelation of site-specific metaphysical "pictures'' (Cf. Kuusela). In both cases, Freire's rhetorical figuration of the ser-estar distinction can help challenge static "practical" readings of Freire's text by reconceptualizing Freirean method as a hermeneutics of estar that might very well enrich or challenge the most prominent strands of 20thcentury hermeneutics in the continental tradition.

Ser, estar, and estar sendo in Freire's writings are not merely linguistic considerations. Scholars should attend to their semantic-conceptual valence and their rhetorical effects in the same way that scholars attend to other influential writers' linguistic, conceptual, and rhetorical choices. Within a comparative rhetoric framework, a general attunement to linguistic plurality and to conceptual networks has the capacity to generate a new Freire—one that is centered in the important methodological advances of rhetorical studies that have called into question the hegemony of anglophone rhetorical practices and the rhetorical canon. By looking at Freire's texts in this light, scholars might not find the answer. However, they can start the conversation.