Eng 609 – Week 10 Blog 2

Aristotle’s “Degree” topoi can be fashioned into a lens for viewing Okawa’s essay on coming to consciousness. As an American woman of Japanese descent, Okawa speaks of her journey to consciousness, having to endure racism, gender slamming, and academic belittling because of her ethnic and cultural background. However, the degree I am speaking of is her focus on Freire’s critical consciousness. She paraphrases Freire, “coming to critical consciousness becomes a liberator alternative, involving reflective reconsidering and the discovery of a dialectical relationship between theory and practice…” (282). This liberatory alternative comprises the humanness inside each of us and our innate humanness. Further, Freire and Okawa are stating that as we move in degrees to a deeper self-reflective relationship with ourselves, we gain in our humanity—we gain in our ability to see the beauty in each other—even those we don’t agree with. In addition, Okawa and Freire lay groundwork for connecting theory and practice in the academy so that we may move past barriers and stereotypes into a higher humanity. This ties into my current research into meditation and the composition classroom. Meditation’s aim is always a deeper understanding of ourselves, a self-reflection so we may slow our minds in order to enjoy the “joy” around us as well as see the “non-joy” we create through our non-reflective think that does not allow for critical consciousness. Hence, Freire and Okawa will play a role in my further research, my continuing effort to dig for deeper degrees of critical consciousness.