Abstract

The two main topics to be examined in this dissertation were prompted by a dual set of concerns brought about by the position held by Third-World intellectuals working in a First-World educational institution. The first topic has to do with the oppositional character of Liberation Discourses. The second topic concerns the predicament of some neo-colonial intellectuals who have to borrow theories that were not designed to address the problems they are most anxious to resolve. The first concern might be termed "the semantics of political opposition in Liberation Discourses" and the second might be labeled "the discursive inconsistencies of Liberation Discourses." Two texts which best illustrate these preoccupations are analyzed: Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed