The liquid world which disorients the maps

Aspects of post‑modernity in Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Zygmunt Bauman to redeem the utopia in education

Abstract

The study, of theoretical nature, from the thought of Bauman and Boaventura de Sousa Santos on a postmodern transition, it tries to identify the challenges posed to educators from the conception of utopia, as thought for the authors, identifying a script for the transforming action of education. In the view of these authors, individualism, fragility of the feeling of solidarity and social participation are consequences of the displacement of state authority to the market, to consumption. Although it seems that Santos has a more utopian and optimistic view of the problems imposed to the contemporary society, of disoriented maps, it was found traces of utopia in Bauman – which he denied – that can lead us to believe that he also cultivates a veiled utopian spirit, in its realistic sense, of using the archeology of the present to find solutions for the future. After the identification and characterization of these concepts the connection thereof is done to the educational scene and the work of the teacher, thus allowing placing such concepts in concrete and everyday scenes experienced by educators in post‑modernity. Bringing up these concepts covers up in meaning and becomes prime fertile material to recover hope and utopia space in education as engines of pedagogical work.