Actually, I saw something different at play at Freire's lecture. He
looked to be, in part, a victim of what Walker Percy called the
Jonas Salk Complex. (Percy once suggested to Salk that, if he
(Salk) wished to get any work done, he should change his name
because otherwise, he could never get past being *Jonas Salk*).
Here's Freire, talking to an audience, who ostensibly knows him
and his work (or at least him through his work) well enough to know
that it is okay and expected to interrupt his talk, or at least
ask questions during the provided pauses, but who seem to be awed
or cowed by his presence - so he goes on and on.
On the one hand, he is Paolo Freire, known proponent of people
taking their language and their history into their own hands, and
making their lives thereby, and on the other hand, he is *Paolo
Freire* famous person, ivory-tower thinker, unapproachable
celebrity.
What a delicious irony.
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