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GLOSSARY INQUIRY: POST-MODERNISM
A term used to denote a variety of discourses that reject modernist claims of objectivity and certainty.
Postmodernists explicitly critique universalizing discourses and the construction of metanarratives (theories that seek to explain everything). All knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is relational, in that it cannot be disentangled from particular locations, histories, contexts and observers. Postmodernism has come to stand for a set of critical discourses that seek to uncover how identity, culture, and knowledge shape and are shaped by issues of language, representation and power. Many postmodern perspectives in education seek to decenter the curriculum, develop multivocality, and challenge educational paradigms based solely on the rationality of science.
Complexity science accepts postmodern insights about the relational nature of knowledge, truth and identity. However, complexivists argue that such questions are not just a matter of human, intersubjective negotiation—they are also a function of the mutually affective relationships among all phenomena. Complexity thus opens onto the more-than-human world.
See related terms: Knowledge, Identity, Culture, Language, Curriculum.
