After postmodernism in educational theory? A collective writing experiment and thought survey

Framing the postmodern invitation

Declarations of the death knell of postmodernism are now quite commonplace. Indeed, various publications such as those that we utilise below suggest that, if anything, postmodernism is at an end and has been dead and buried for some time. In its place, an age dominated by playfulness, hybridity, relativism and the fragmentary self has given way to something else, as yet undefined. Brian McHale (2015) describes the lifecycle of postmodernism in terms of the ‘big bang’ in 1966 with Derrida’s seminal paper ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ at the Johns Hopkins conference ‘The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man’ symposium; identifying its peak years as 1973–1989; followed by an uncertainty and reorientation in the 1990s; and the aftermath and beyond after 2001, which we are currently experiencing.

Beginning in the late 1980s and extending into the 1990s a variety of texts proclaimed the end of postmodernism—Sociology after postmodernism (Owen, 1997), Thinking Again: Education after postmodernism (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish, 1998), After Postmodernism: Education, Politics and Identity (Smith & Wexler, 1995), and Encounters: philosophy of history after postmodernism (Domańska, 1998). These assessments continued well into the 2000s—Philosophy after postmodernism, (Crowther, 2003), Feminism after postmodernism (Zalewski, 2000), Painting after postmodernism (Rose, 2016), Literature after postmodernism: reconstructive fantasies (Huber, 2014), Value, art, politics: criticism, meaning and interpretation after postmodernism (Harris, 2007). All these texts, while different, and utilising diverse lenses, have clearly addressed the complexities of ontologies of postmodernism and its performances over the years.

However, given the theoretical and philosophical movements, including the ideology and recent turns in politics such as the post-truth and fake news era (Peters, 2017), it seems that PoMo is no more. It seems that it has been succeeded by a new sensibility and configuration. We are not sure what it is exactly but we know that one era has ended and another has begun. Should this be surprising? Perhaps not, as all intellectual fashions change. What some argue is that it is part of intellectuality under late capitalism, as even Western Marxism is subject to its whims. We know a little about the circulation of ideas and the phenomenon now referred to as ‘going viral’ in relation to social media mostly now measured in ‘hits’ rather than use or citation. Indeed, various possibilities have been put forward after postmodernism: post-postmodernism, new materialism, posthumanism, critical realism, digimodernism, metamodernism, performatism, post-digitalism, trans-postmodernism, post-millennialism, Marxism after postmodernism and transnationality as the contemporary cultural logic of neoliberal global capitalism. There is no consensus, except an agreement that an innocent return to Modernism, humanism, ‘objectivity’ is no longer a possibility. If the 1990s were a decade when scholars in a range of disciplines asked the question of what comes after postmodernism, the 2000s were a decade that investigated a range of substitutes and possibilities.

For the 50th anniversary of Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), we have decided to conduct a philosophical survey, addressing philosophers of education from all around the globe with the same statement to solicit a comment, argument or position. In this experiment, we invited readers and contributors of EPAT to respond to the question of what comes after postmodernism and how this will affect educational philosophy and theory. This experiment, both with academic genre and with new modes of philosophical survey or pulse-taking, provided an opportunity for community-led deliberation on what postmodernism is, was, and has done; what it is and was not and has not done; and the nature of unfolding theory in the future from diverse ethical and ontological orientations.

The ruse and folly of the question

The question of what comes after postmodernism is deliberately obtuse. It is designed in part as a provocation, especially to those easily offended by the label—for whom it means ‘relativism’, anti-science’, an attack on truth and all Western values. It is also designed as an invitation to respond creatively with an alternative, not necessarily a system or worldview, but possibly some idea that is not Western, that does not originate in Europe during the Enlightenment. The editors have remained agnostic on issues of ideology and we decided to publish all submissions with only light editing, with the idea not just of inclusiveness but also of protecting a diversity of viewpoints.

The question of what comes after postmodernism is, of course, a ruse and a folly. So many of those who have been responsible for promoting a kind of anti-modernist, anti-foundationalist and anti-representational philosophy have also addressed themselves to the notion of temporality, of history and of teleology that distinguishes a linear and causal succession where, at least, in the history of Western avant gardes and philosophy, wedded to an unexamined notion of ‘progress’, one paradigm replaces another—modernism/postmodernism, impressionism/postimpressionism, preRaphelitism/postRaphelitism. The avant gardes from the 1860s to the 1950s were dominated by radical and challenging ideas associated with technological progress and the dominance of Western conceptions. Abstract Expressionism, neo-Dadism and Pop art that took a variety of forms including Conceptual art, Minimalism, Video art, Performance art and Installation art were reactions against the reigning modernist art practices questioning in an ironic and playful way concepts of originality and authenticity in art, the hierarchy of high and low culture, the master narratives and the idea that there is inherently one true meaning of a work of art. A movement that began in art and literature found it shared common sources in philosophy and the rest of the humanities. Yet to characterise the movement simply as a successor paradigm, as many contributing scholars have argued, is limiting especially when talking about a set of art or intellectual practices. It might be better to talk of the movement as a style or attitude.

Methodology and orientation

This special issue is an exercise in collective writing and we have envisaged it as a ‘philosophy of a global thought survey’. We invited contributors to provide a short piece of writing and argument (about 500–600 words, and no more than 5 references). Our aim was to be as inclusive as possible. The process of collective writing in the past years has become an important exercise in ethics and multiplicity of engagements with diverse topics and people (see for instance: Peters et al., 2016; Jandric et al., 2017; Stewart et al., 2017).

Below are a number of statements by various authors to provide an orientation to the topic and help to frame the exercise:

An aesthetic of cognitive mapping—a pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system—will necessarily have to respect this now enormously complex representational dialectic and invent radically new forms in order to do it justice. This is not then, clearly, a call for a return to some older kind of machinery, some older and more transparent national space, or some more traditional and reassuring perspectival or mimetic enclave: the new political art (if it is possible at all) will have to hold to the truth of postmodernism, that is to say, to its fundamental object—the world space of multinational capital—at the same time at which it achieves a breakthrough to some as yet unimaginable new mode of representing this last, in which we may again begin to grasp our positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralised by our spatial as well as our social confusion. The political form of postmodernism, if there ever is any, will have as its vocation the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as well as a spatial scale (Jameson, 1991).

As we know, postmodernism, as a literary and cultural movement, came to an end some time ago not only in the West but also in China, although it has permeated in a fragmentary way nearly all aspects of contemporary culture and thought. Today, we readily think about the duality of something without falling back on the traditional idea of ‘centre’ or ‘totality.’ In the field of critical theory, there is no longer any dominant theoretical school or literary current that plays a role like the one played by postmodernism and poststructuralism in the latter part of the twentieth century (Ning, 2013, p. 296).

It is not that postmodernism’s impact is diminished or disappearing. Not at all; we can’t unlearn a great idea. But rather, postmodernism is itself being replaced as the dominant discourse and is now taking its place on the artistic and intellectual palette alongside all the other great ideas and movements. In the same way as we are all a little Victorian at times, a little modernist, a little Romantic, so we are all, and will forever be, children of postmodernism. (This in itself is, of course, a postmodern idea) (Doxc, 2011).

It seems then, that a new dominant cultural logic is emerging; the world—or in any case, the literary cosmos—is rearranging itself. This process is still in flux and must be approached strictly in the present tense. To understand the situation, we have to pose a number of questions. The first, and most dramatic, is ‘Is postmodernism dead?’; quickly followed by ‘If so, when did it die?’. Critics—such as Christian Moraru, Josh Toth, Neil Brooks, Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen—repeatedly point to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the new millennium, the 9/11 attacks, the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the wars in the Middle East, the financial crisis and the ensuing global revolutions. Taken together, these events signify the failure and unevenness of global capitalism as an enterprise, leading to an ensuing disillusionment with the project of neo-liberal postmodernity and the recent political splintering into extreme Left and extreme Right. The cumulative effect of these events—and the accompanying hyper-anxiety brought about by twenty-four hour news—has made the Western world feel like a more precarious and volatile place, in which we can no longer be nonchalant about our safety or our future (Gibbons, 2017).

As to whether postmodern discourse is still dominant these days, I’d say it’s much less so. Since 9/11, we’ve witnessed the unfolding of a new and rather alarming grand narrative, at just the point when grand narratives were complacently said to be finished. One grand narrative—the Cold War—was indeed over, but, for reasons connected with the West’s victory in that struggle, it had no sooner ended than another got off the ground. Postmodernism, which had judged history to be now post-metaphysical, post-ideological, even post-historical, was thus caught off-guard. And I don’t believe it has ever really recovered (Eagleton, 2016).

Postmodern philosophy emphasises the elusiveness of meaning and knowledge. This is often expressed in postmodern art as a concern with representation and an ironic self-awareness…. The only place where the postmodern is extant is in children’s cartoons like Shrek and The Incredibles, as a sop to parents obliged to sit through them with their toddlers. This is the level to which postmodernism has sunk; a source of marginal gags in pop culture aimed at the under-eights (Kirby, 2016).

In considering the names that might possibly be used to designate the new era following ‘postmodernism,’ one finds that the prefix ‘trans’ stands out in a special way. The last third of the twentieth centurydeveloped under the sign of ‘post,’ which signalled the demise of such concepts of modernity as ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity,’ ‘soul’ and ‘subjectivity,’ ‘utopia’ and ‘ideality,’ ‘primary origin’ and ‘originality,’ ‘sincerity’ and ‘sentimentality.’ All of these concepts are now being reborn in the form of ‘trans-subjectivity,’ ‘trans-idealism,’ ‘trans-utopianism,’ ‘trans-originality,’ ‘trans-lyricism,’ ‘trans-sentimentality’ etc. (Epstein, 1998)

Postmodernism as a literary movement in the United States is now in its final phase of decadence…. American culture moves into an era of postliterature' (29) …As postmodernism fades into the past, there is no evidence that any meaningful literary movement will follow it…. American culture generally is becoming increasingly postliterate… and in the end of postmodernism we may also be witnessing the end of literature as a mode of culture.’ (De Villo, 1987, p. 41)

‘The Ends of Postmodernism?’ The question mark acts to recoil upon a set of discourses and cultural phenomenon that, at least in the popular imaginary, proclaims in apocalyptic tones ‘the end’: the end of modernism, the end of metaphysics, the end of humanism, the end of Man, the death of God, the end of value. It resonates with its modernist Hegelian sibling discourses, both rightist and leftist, that still carry some theoretical weight: the end of ideology; the end of history, the end of the welfare state, the end of communism or capitalism. And, at the same time, it shares the same kind of popular expectation of something that follows ‘the end’: whether it be ‘the new’, ‘the beginning’, or ‘a return’, historically speaking. In one sense these eschatological narratives of endings (and beginnings), …. are endemic to Western culture and help define both its cultural specificity and its sources of renewal. ‘Postmodernism’, like a host of other similar terms christened with the same prefix, such as ‘Post-Impressionism’ and ‘Post-Expressionism’, employs a reactive rhetorical device or strategy, betraying what I call a ‘naming anxiety’. Reading the signs of exhaustion—an end or completion—the users of this device, following many precedents, lacked the confidence to name ‘the new’ and fell back upon the strategy of naming what it is not. This process of negative definition is, intellectually, both less risky and less ambitious. Charles Jencks (1996, pp. 14, 15) has recorded seventy such related uses, including ‘post-industrial’, ‘postminimalism’, ‘post-Marxism’ and ‘post-liberal era’, and charted a genealogy of ‘postmodernism’ in terms of its pre-history (1870–1950), its positive definition (1950–1980), and its final phase (after 1981) characterised by attacks upon it and its anthologisation (Peters, 2008).

The writing experiment

This special issue is an experiment and performance of inclusiveness of ideas and of scholars, of ethnicities, ideologies and countries, and of gaining the widest representation of philosophical views in the question posed. The format and genre had simple rules mostly governed by conciseness and the restriction of words: governed to be about the same length as a full abstract. The format, however, we felt was substantial enough for scholars to register their view and to point to their preferred alternative. There was still space for original statements, thoughts, ideas and presentations.

The question itself—posed to the global community of philosophers of education—attracted over 170 responses from 26 countries. While the leading affiliations were unsurprisingly dominated by Western countries, such as USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the range of ethnicities, view points and philosophical lenses was diverse among those based in Western countries, while  a significant number of authors also came from South East Asia, former Eastern Europe and other countries around the world.

The question presented to scholars around the world was deliberately incendiary and naive: we wanted to allow contributors to give vent to their feelings and clearly state their attitude. ‘What comes after postmodernism in educational theory?’ is an attempt to capture the intellectual fashion cycle that governs the hallowed halls of the university, in part a result of the commodity status of ideas and their embodiment in texts that are sold and often become used in university courses. Against this view of commodity cycle there are also some now standard philosophical positions that have become canonised (as postmodernism itself has) to function as reference points in intellectual history. Yet, the canonisation of texts and their anthologising do not represent the final step in the historical reception of ideas often because of the intersection of ideas, their revival and mutation, give new life and new directions. We suspect that this will be the case for the modernity-postmodernity, modernism-postmodernism debates that have engendered other philosophical developments.

The genre of the short piece still allows the statement of an argument, or, at least, its outline; alternatively it also allows the expression of feeling—disgust, amusement, irony—and even a nuanced understanding, together with a brief indication of sources and references. This is in marked distinction to the now industrial, standardised 6,000 word academic paper that has become the major vehicle for the expression of thought or findings and dominates contemporary journal publishing—a genre and standard which, even a short glimpse at the archives for this journal will reveal, is not fixed, permanent, necessary, or natural, but more precisely understood as part of the fashion of higher education global productivity measurement of today. Indeed, the brief paper has its cousin in the aphoristic genre often associated with the wisdom tradition (hadiths, proverbs, epigraphs, sutra) that dates from Heraclitus in the West. It also has connections to questions of form in poetry like the Haiku or Tanku in Japan, or sayings, idioms and puns in folklore. Many of the papers make use of various aspects of the compression of thought to rely on gnomic utterances. Many of our contributors take advantage of the form and the relation between form, style and thought to express the complexity of their views.

This genre experiment also foreshadows a larger whole. Like an abstract it forecasts the structure of a larger piece and the direction of argument. To a large extent we favoured the short piece for the reason that it gave greater opportunity for us to accept the largest possible number of responses. And we were overwhelmed when we discovered that more than 170 scholars submitted their work. Our attitude was to try to accommodate everyone through sharing their words; to perform only light editing; to accept all work irrespective of the sentiments expressed (and, of course, whether we agreed or not was immaterial). The effect has been to give a kind of survey quality of thought, analysis and reaction—a philosophical rain-gauge to register the climate change of opinion. In this case, we sorted all short papers into nine rough categories that reflect some of the major commonalities.

The philosophy of fluid containers

These categories are convenient containers only. They are not water tight containers. Many of them are overlapping, and allow us to think with ideas. Categories and papers within them are not organised in any kind of specific order other than the logic of the editors’ understanding of fluid containers, that spill-over to the next one.

Postmodern thinking container

Papers in this section reflected on postmodernism in relation to practices and thinking, and a large subset of these worked to identify, analyse and describe in some detail the sorts of qualities marking postmodern thought and what comes after. Papers explored binaries associated with the modern or pre-postmodern era—of objectivity/subjectivity, universalism/particularlism, holistic/systemic and so on. They characterised what has been learned since the postmodern era and after its theoretical reign, in terms of breaking through these divides and distinctions. Building common consensus brick by brick, returning to the world while carrying a critical theoretical spirit, filling empty traditions with earth and life, engaging and reinvigorating a postmodernism that is not dead but rather undead, appropriated and misappropriated—these were some of the thought experiments invoked by writers concerned with what comes next. Living in paradoxical times where there must be reality, truth and life, while cognizant of the politics of knowledge in the post-truth era, was considered in papers from the views of the philosopher, the educator and the politician. Many papers also encouraged playfulness, minor philosophies and small experiments, to think through the present as possible and develop optimism against herding forces of relativism in the world today.

Postmodern politics container

Politics was foregrounded in many papers and implicitly invoked in others, which referenced the challenge of developing empowering truth and knowledge in a post-truth era in politics. The overvaluation of numbers, data, resources and science over human life, hope, love and existence was noted as another characteristic of the current political era, where postmodernism has been engaged in particular ways at the neglect of others, to reframe the roles and practices of institutions, including schools. Identity politics, of whiteness, westernity, victimhood and more, are analysed as they interweave particular currents of the postmodern era and beyond. The need for greater holism that serves people more equitably and justly, entailed a move away from decontructivist tendencies of the era by some writers, while others noted the politics of naming eras, constructing eras and the like. Such papers serve to underscore the diversity and plethora of politics, of truth, identities, peoples, resources, theories and more, evidencing power relationships at play in scholarship and contemporary social and political life.

Postmodern cross-disciplines container

Thought, politics, identities, education and theory as shaped by postmodernity and since, were common themes throughout papers, while a smaller subset of papers elaborated and unfolded on such themes through exploring disciplinary orientations within and beyond educational philosophy and theory. These papers showed how postmodernism and its so-called demise has intersected with such essential concepts as intelligence, communication, practice, art and moral value, as seen in various fields, including psychology, media studies, science, arts and physical education. At the same time, many papers argued for making connections across fields to complexify knowledge gained from any one reductive view. Balancing out abstractness with intuition and childlike vision was also called for by some authors. How globalism has impacted fields, and the importance of maintaining criteria for research and claims in an interdisiplinary context were also explored as key results and responses of the postmodern era and beyond. Such an exploration across disciplines invokes new questions in turn, for educational theory, politics, education and more.

Non-western postmodernism container

There were a large number of papers that interpreted the question in relation to Eastern ideas, philosophy or systems such as a return to modernity (with fresh non-Western eyes), indigenous philosophies, African philosophies, post-colonialism, Confucianism, Daoism and Taoism. Many of these papers emphasised sympathy with postmodernism, and some, the difficulty of translation or the emergence and rediscovery of classical Eastern doctrines that take a new confluent form as a result of Western contact. In particular, this container heralds both an end to the hegemony of Western forms and philosophy and a new moral and aesethetic sensitivity that accompanies the economic decline of the West and the rise of the Rest, especially China. It is a pity that we had only one response from India and Africa, although also encouraging to get such positive responses from scholars in China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Not all of these scholars chose to write from an Eastern perspective. A good number of the contributors from the US were from countries outside the US but working in US-based institutions.

Postmodern critique container

The brief essays collected together under this heading speak to both the critique of postmodernism and its replacement, with most taking a benign view but arguing for an ethical dialogism as a successor. The few falling into the first category raise the spectre of reason and realism, picturing postmodernism as a reaction against humanism, ‘pure reason’ and objectivity. For these thinkers postmodernism is self-defeating in its assumed relativism. Of those contributors falling into the ‘replacement’ set, a good number emphasise a version of dialogue as a means of rescuing theory from the relativism of postmodernism. Postmodernism deconstructed subject-centred reason, but had no where to go. Dialogue and specifically Habermasian intersubjective communication action is advocated as one dialogical solution. Another proposes Bakhtin’s philosophical dialogism, and yet another practical reason in dialogue after Kant. A number of submissions suggest we can go back to modernity, to metaphysics, or to a metamodernism or transmodernism (after its engagement with postmodernism). Some suggest we go back to Plato and a kind of shared wisdom. What is disturbing to most is that postmodernism is associated with scepticism, subjectivism and indeterminism. These authors are worried there are no certain criteria for determining value and that its effect are deleterious for public and private memory.

Postmodern legacies container

Many authors concerned with the question of what comes after, in this section and elsewhere, devote themselves to posing an alternative: comparativism, ecologism, openness, inter or trans relationalisms. Some outline that we must live with the acceptance of greater pluralism. One contributor maintains that there is a necessary creative dynamic that links postmodernity to modernity: they exist together. One author questions whether ‘post’ means the same as ‘after’ and then questions whether postmodernism is anything more than a form of critique. It is not a theory, she concludes, and perhaps it hasn’t yet arrived. Others suggest postmodernism exists as a kind of paradox. Again there are calls to go back to Kant, to realism, to humanism, to certainty. Others emphasise the not-yet, the moment before emergence of truly global imperatives associated with ecology. Some retreat from disclosing alternatives to examine the term of the question and what it implies.

Postmodern education container

The papers around education emerge from thinking beyond postmodernism as the capitalisation of the self. The growth of intellectual, human and social capital and the increasing importance of all forms of capitalisation of the self, coupled with the accent on a Lyotardian logic of performativity and epistemologies of performance, provide the role for government in developing learning infrastructure, incentives and promoting access to knowledge in education. Postmodern critique is in the affinities with Structuralism, as the critique of humanist, liberal, philosophy and the decentering of the rational, autonomous, self-transparent, subject of humanist thought. This leads to a general theoretical understanding of language and culture in terms of linguistic and symbolic systems. Adding to the critique enters the space where the postmodern comes not only in tension with structuralism, but also with the contemporary thinking around education—whether it is pedagogy, curriculum or leadership.

Postmodern new ontologies container

Papers in this container focused on re-thinking boundaries of episteme and ontologies of postmodernism. The differences to structuralism, the notion of new historicism, the reintroduction of history as genealogy, and the challenge to scientism and essentialism in the human sciences, anti-foundationalism in epistemology and ethics, and a new emphasis upon perspectivism, were not in the forefront of these concerns. Instead, the ideas of challenging the ontology and foregrounding the question ‘what is philosophy?’ The politics of different—or new—ontologies offer a deepening of democracy through a political critique of both enlightenment and postmodern values. Moving past the traditional ontologies offers an emphasis on philosophies of difference and the encounter with the Other and the new emergence of ‘the multitude’—the coming of world democracy in philosophy. While we do not suggest that this container is fixed, it certainly offers possibilities that are beyond traditional positionings of ontology.

Postmodern theory container

There are a number of notions that emerge in and embrace papers in this section. Some of them relate to thinking about philosophy of the subject and overall notions. One could argue that the point is to argue that papers in this container performed what is referred to as ‘always historicizing’ and working with a genealogy of methods. Similarly, some papers in this section argue to materialise, that is to follow the linguistic turn and philosophical modernism that gave birth to the literary culture, where texts and speech became the cultural ‘materials’ for fashioning the self, individual and identity. Narrative is thus a textual analogue for the self, and allows the materialising of self-consciousness. The papers in this section have however argued for the importance of theory and reflection, thinking, being and other relations with theory within Po-Mo. Theory in this mix does not give an answer to the question, but it complicates the positioning, progression and trajectory towards ‘what next’.

Concluding comments: thought survey as democratisation

While philosophy in Greek means ‘love of wisdom’, postmodernism as a field has perhaps no boundaries or clear end lines, and is often contested in terms of what counts as postmodernism and what does not. This writing experiment allows a thought survey to function as a carrier of multiplicities and projects focused on postmodernism. The diversity of contributors speak to one of the benefits of doing this kind of 'thought survey': and the democratisations of scholarship and their opportunities to express scholarly arguments. The process of collective writing is the opposite of silencing scholarship and arguments. The global philosophical arguments represented in this thought survey are both encouraging and concerning. Encouraging, with respect to getting so many diverse and excellent scholars on board, from so many countries, institutions and ethnicities; and at the same time concerning that it took us so long to get here.

This writing and thought experiment reveals, first and most basically, that there are a number of orientations towards and conceptualisations of postmodernism in the diverse and interdisciplinary field that is roughly described as philosophy of education or educational theory today around the world. Perhaps some sort of implicit postmodern spirit has framed this endeavour, as this experiment has highlighted in relation that such diversity cannot be essentialised or simplistically categorised and systematised, if we consider such modernist defining features of scholarship and theory such as those of geography, demography, identity and ideology. The survey has thus portrayed difference and diversity, showing that no two scholars are just alike, despite the common sense, modernist view still upheld in much discourse on higher education and research, that some rough consensus is the primary function of academic practices—that scholars overwhelmingly favour one of view of things, at least within one field. That is certainly not what this experiment has revealed, although a more traditionally cultivated edited collection on postmodernism would surely suggest something more linear, coherent, artificially systematic.

On the other hand, if anything unifies these responses, it is a clear sense of commitment to discourse on the topic of postmodernism. This commitment surpasses any evident conviction on the part of the authors to the traditional contemporary genre of academic writing, as few authors tried to submit more than 500 words, a seemingly impossibly small number of words to convey arguments among many scholars accustomed to the 6000 word essay. Responses to our question were also often characterised by strong language and conviction. This may be partly a way to make each word count in a short space. Yet, a sense of political or civic duty, to righting moral wrongs related to truth and post-truth, to empowerment of thought, of students, or humanity, infuses many essays, revealing also a kind of pulse-taking of the time we are living in today, marked by feelings of uncertainty in relation to global politics, epistemology and professional vocation. These responses overwhelm, taken as a whole, reflecting a dedicated and very much alive academic field of educational philosophy and theory. It is a force that is not impossible to uncover if we dare to engage in experimentation and look beyond the fashions of academic publishing of today. We finally must thank the authors for their contributions, which offer a broader and deeper exploration of the state of the field while collectively driving in many fruitful directions for further experimentation within and beyond academic writing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the administrative assistance of Susanne Brighouse, Managing Editor. As with any large project of this kind the processes for classifying, archiving and processing material is very much a part of the project. Our kind thanks to Susanne.