"Class Struggle": Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory‪.‬

"Postmodernism," as a loose collection of theoretical strategies, research methods, and political positions, has enjoyed a remarkably fast rise to prominence and a similarly remarkable range of influence within academia. Nearly every major discipline within the humanities and social sciences has been influenced by postmodernist thought; in literary studies and anthropology, for instance, the impact has been profound, reshaping both theory and practice in these disciplines. The field of education, too, has been strongly influenced by the postmodern turn in social theory, particularly among scholars interested in the critical and liberatory possibilities of pedagogy. Indeed, part of the undoubted allure of postmodernism was that it offered a new paradigm such politically-charged scholarship at a time, the 1970s and 80s, when many of the cherished ideals of educational radicals were increasingly undermined by widespread political reaction and a public disaffection with some of the more utopian aims of progressive education. In this regard, the anthology is a welcome challenge to the popularity of postmodernism in educational theory and within social theory as a whole; as numerous essays in this intriguing new anthology argue, even a cursory glance at the current global political economy suggests that that the insights of historical materialism are far from obsolete. Marxism, as a systematic and radical understanding of the social world, was a key target of postmodern theorizing--exemplified, for instance, by Baudrillard's definitive break with his own Marxist past in The Mirror of Production and Lyotard's more wide-ranging attack on "meta-narratives." The commitment to at least some form of economic determinism and to the paramount importance of historical understanding, hallmarks of virtually any "Marxist" position, were in direct conflict with the hostility to meta-narratives and radical skepticism common to most varieties of postmodernism. Some scholars attempted to fuse postmodernism and Marxism, most notably Fredric Jameson and David Harvey, but this inevitably demanded concessions, in these cases toward classical Marxism, that produced a strong engagement with the cultural/aesthetic character of postmodernism (e.g., pastiche, the blurring of high and low culture, a relentless questioning of authorial intent) but markedly less with the central philosophical tenets of postmodern theorizing (radical skepticism and the impossibility of "truth," the inevitably semiotic nature of "reality"). In general terms, there remains a strong tendency among former and current Marxists to surrender entirely to the postmodern (as in the work of ex-Marxist Jean Baudrillard) or to create a thoroughgoing, multi-pronged attack on postmodernism (as in the work of staunch Marxists Terry Eagleton and Alex Callinicos).