Inspired by Paulo Freire, the proposed presentation is a site of critical dialogue between two Israeli women researchers concerned with understanding the ways in which feminist critical pedagogy, namely inspired by bell hooks, allows new forms of adult education. In particular it aims to unveil the processes that develop an Oppositional Gaze (hooks, 1992) at Israeli formation and deconstruct power relations within their own vision.

In bell hooks' work and in her piece Black Looks (1992) in particular, she argues that to gaze back at domination can be an act of agency, an empowering position that has a potential to transform people into agents of social change. The development of a critical counter-hegemonic gaze, discussed by hooks, as the Oppositional Gaze (ibid.) reframes the way in which individuals experience reality and in effect enables critical platforms of learning. The oppositional gaze thus allows the development of a political awareness that, in hooks' (2010) terms, seeks to understand that which is under the surface and rebuilds a new critical frame as it is interconnected to questions of gazing at power.

The first case study is a photo elicitation monologue of a University student, daughter to Moroccan migrants, discussing a photograph taken from her mother's family album. The monologue began in the framework of photo elicitation workshop encounters of Jewish and Arab students in an academic college in the north of Israel. Focused on family albums, the workshop examined family histories of migration shared by both peoples in ways insufficiently addressed in scholarly, educational (“official knowledge”, Apple, 2014), or daily discourse. Through the student's discourse on the inter-generational migration trauma – including her mother's denial and concealment of her "Moroccan-ness" – she practices an oppositional-gaze at Israeli Ashkenazi-Jewish hegemony. 

The second case discusses the parting from Zionism of a Jewish Israeli feminist activist, a daughter of Ashkenazi migrants to the State of Israel. Understanding the counter-hegemonic learning process within activist frameworks as an adult, the analysis discusses that which enables a process that develops new critical knowledge of Israeli reality. Trough the analysis of a photo of landscape the interlocutor presents the development of her Oppositional Gaze at the dominant Zionist narrative and therefore according to her ‘reveals the lies. The analysis shows that it enables the development of a complex gaze that acknowledges that one's gaze does not appear from nowhere and has a position in the world. Furthermore it exposes the possibility to develop alternative knowledge when transForming ones vision.

Finally, inspired by bell hooks' development of knowledge, these two case studies we shall argue, show critical forms of learning that develop ways of challenging white male supremacy, derived from sexism, racism and other forms of domination and discrimination.