ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to shift the terms of the debate in which postmodernism is usually engaged, especially by its more recent critics. In doing so, it will argue that postmodernism as a site of" conflicting forces and divergent tendencies" (Patton 1988: 89) becomes useful pedagogically when it provides elements of an oppositional discourse for understanding and responding to the changing cultural and educational shift affecting youth in North America, and elsewhere. A resistant or political postmodernism seems invaluable for helping educators and others address the changing conditions of knowledge production in the context of emerging mass electronic media and the role these new technologies are playing as critical socializing agencies in redefining both the locations and the meaning of pedagogy.
