The Problem of Freedom in Postmodern Education

Postmodernism in the West and postsocialism in Eastern Europe have deep features in common as they both challenge the foundations of the world order. They create a new educational situation where basic issues of subjectivity, identity, human freedom, and social agency need to be reevaluated and reconstructed. This situation affects both sides of the former Iron Curtain since East and West served as each other's Other in terms of identity formation. This book deals with the problem of freedom and identity in educational theories as they are reinterpreted in the critical perspective of postmodern social theory and postsocialist political openness. Issues of freedom and identity are considered as dialectically related to those of power and emancipation. This book sketches a metatheoretical perspective on emancipatory education in a broad, trans-cultural context appropriate to the new global community.