ABSTRACT
Post-postmodernism is a paradox. The zeitgeist of twenty-first century ecologically resides not in a void or a predictable space. Rather, the ‘is-ness’ of being exists in a paradox—paradox refers to the irrational, mystical, contradictory juxtapositions of being in the cosmos. A paradox is engendered discursively while moving beyond a stable, dichotomous format of being as Western Enlightenment movements imply. A paradox of being debunks any binary of body-mind, self-other, or conscious-unconscious. Such denial of existential dichotomy pries open a space where a paradox resides with imagination. I argue that a paradox of being and/non-being shifts discourse in educational theory in the era of post-postmodernism. Tao Te Ching [道德經] illustrates the paradoxes of living and existence. Linguistic, metaphoric name of Tao is not Tao anymore [道可道, 非常道]. Tao exists as Tao; yet Tao does not exists as Tao (Jung, 2001). Tao itself is fluid in that it shifts being, embodiment, and operations. This paradox of being/non-being and action/non-action of Tao is implemented in the non-action philosophy of wuwei [無爲]: ‘No action is undertaken, and yet nothing is left undone’ (Chan, 1963, p. 162). A paradox of post-postmodernism embraces not-knowingness of knowing and knowingness of not-knowing. This epistemological blind spot of knowing/un-knowing becomes an open-ended space to imagine multiple approaches to interpreting who/what educational theorists are.
