L’éducation populaire comme art du possible ? L’émancipation intellectuelle dans les misiones vénézuéliennes

Through the ethnographic observation of an education programme in a context of social exclusion, the misiones in Venezuela, this article reflects on ways of connecting the sociology of education with a sociology of emancipation. The misiones, a cornerstone of the new Bolivarian programme of revolutionary education, are primarily aimed at the generation who did benefit from the massive extention of education (1950-1970). So they fully belong to South America’s tradition of educación popular. The results of the « people’s school » in terms of integrating the lower classes into the school system are not obvious, or at least difficult to assess. Still, there is a clear sense of emancipation regarding the attendees in the barrios. However, it has little to do with the teaching delivered in the missiones. Three dynamics of emancipation may be seen as contributing to the emergence of a popular subject through education : first, starting from the classroom, the creation of a space of mutual knowledge ; then the dialectic of freedom and the invention of the self, allowed by the specificity of school time.