Performative Utopia

This is a new term that I have come to feel a very large connection to "performative utopia." It was a term that I learned at a workshop I participated in at the Hip Hop Preemptive Ed conference I went to this past weekend. I wanted to share something that I wrote on my class blackboard about it:

This was a free write that I did at one of the workshops at the preemptive ed conference this past weekend, I wanted to share it here because it is a true reflection of how my thoughts have been reshaped and confirmed by the Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

The prompt simply was, what is your Utopia:

"To walk into a room and see the colors on the inside of brothers and sisters,
bursting through their skin that is imprisoning,
confining,
dividing
If we could read the struggles of each person we passed on their backs
because it is behind them,
on their legs,
because it has helped them to stand stronger, when the world,
blusters and quakes and floods our homes,
and our hearts
if hopes could be seen on their fingertips,
because it has pushed them to reach higher,
and we could see their joys in the depths of their eyes,
seeing those joys in yesterday, today and tomorrow,
if we could feel the rushes of power the compassion in their hearts,
with each beat that booms through their chest,
translucent are the wears and the tears of their being,
only love,
can be seen and what of hearing
an endless listening exercise, exchanging our lives and
hearing the stories that have painted, and molded and sculpted the masterpiece that is our existence,
my utopia is a world,
where the image of youth holding hands in a ring is around
the universe"


and that was how far I got in the few minutes we had to write.

but what it reminds me of, is that when I was reading The Pedagogy of the Oppressed how I would parallel the ideas to my own life. I read it in a way that examined the choices I make, and the way I live my day to day.

Paulo Freire's utopia was a place where we would be liberated of our oppressions and where the oppressors would be willing to bring themselves to be reborn into human beings who were bound by the same liberation. My idea is that in order to truly be freed from our oppressions, and reach a place of utopia, we must find a way to be strengthened by them, and to be moved by hope and realization of a better tomorrow. I feel that we must all experience a "rebirth" in a sense, where the oppressed must also remove themselves from their places of struggle and places of pity to become fully human again. This has been a constant for me, to move from the oppression and into an empowering state.

Its a strange thought, but sometimes, I feel that without my oppressions, I just would not be as strong as I am and I don't know that I would want to be any other way. Not to say I enjoy the struggles, and the hardships, but what I enjoy, is rising above them.

Is it a strange thought for me to say, that oppressions are important to our development into becoming full human beings?

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Blackboard is something we have to do for our classes here, we have to be fully engaged in discussion boards on topics and event reflections and class comments, it can be tiring, but also very good for just getting your words out without having to in class.

Today when I was walking from school to the A train I read this on a church posting
"Its better to struggle to live in Utopia than consent to live in Hell."

All I have to say to that is... "Word."