Paulo Freire as Institutional Counterlogic: The Fragility of Relational Grammar in the Face of Campaign-Based Governance of Adult Literacy in Brazil

Abstract

In this article I argue that Paulo Freire produced an institutional counter-logic to the dominant form of governance of adult literacy in Brazil, historically organized according to a campaign‑based and threshold grammar oriented toward the achievement of measurable, administratively closable minimum competencies. Referred to here as the threshold grammar, this rationality was consolidated in programs such as the Campaign for the Education of Adolescents and Adults (1947) and MOBRAL (1967–1985), defining literacy as a short-term intervention based on indicators and amenable to certification. In contrast, Freire’s pedagogy formulated a relational grammar grounded in long temporality, the historicity of subjects, dialogue, and praxis, whose institutional requirements are incongruent with campaign-based arrangements and with the audit logics sustaining the governability of the sector. Using a genealogical approach, I explain why Freire’s counter-logic remained structurally fragile: not because of pedagogical shortcomings, but because of the inability of state institutions to absorb practices that expand time, territory, and reciprocity. By making explicit this mismatch between pedagogical practices and institutional arrangements, I contribute to debates on adult literacy, educational governance, and critical pedagogy, repositioning the Freirean legacy as an institutional rather than merely didactic problem.