To confront and overcome oppression requires a critical consciousness, that is, an awareness of the dynamics and reality of oppression as a state of being. To illustrate, an acritical position on oppression would reduce oppression to violence. Such a position, however, overlooks a critical dimension of oppression. How so? The root word for ‘oppression,’ as Marilyn Fyre points out, is the element ‘press:’ “Presses are used to mold things or flatten them or to reduce them in bulk, sometimes to reduce them by squeezing out the gases or liquids in them.” She says, “Something pressed is something caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict, or prevent the thing’s motion.” In other words, oppression as a form of elusive power (rather than pure violence) operates (1) re-molding man (read: re-creating) in its own image and (2) demobilizing man by managing the threshold of dissent (read: determining what is possible and impossible, real and unreal). The critical point is this: oppression as an elusive power amounts to a state of alienation (read: a state of being) wherein man is sheared of his unique and existential possibilities (i.e. existential uniqueness) such as choice, the determination of an authentic and original project, and the determination of a future.
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