Deciphering attempts to decipher postmodern educational research

Of course when women practice pissed criticism, they're accused of being incontinent1 —Lee Quinby (1994, p. 131) E ducational Researcher has recently published several articles focusing on postmodernism and research that have sought to clarify and contain postmodernism (Constas 1998a, 1998b; Howe, 1998). The tone of these articles invokes a form of "epidemic logic" (Singer, 1993) promoting the idea that postmodernism has infiltrated the acad-emy like a virus and infected educa-tional theorists with varied ill effects. Some theorists (paraphrasing the "three kinds of responses " outlined by Constas (1998a) exhibit symptoms such as speaking gibberish, while others wan-der aimlessly (and meaninglessly), and still others are in a state of paralysis. Mark Constas (1998a) laments the in-comprehension of this "state of transi-tion " brought on by postmodernism while Kenneth Howe (1998) more dramatically points to the "pretty treacherous conceptual ground " (p. 13) educational researchers now find them-selves on. Here I decipher continued calls for clarity surrounding postmod-ern theory in education focusing par-ticularly upon Constas's (1998a) article