Postdigital Participation in Education: An Introduction

Abstract

In their introduction, the editors explore the complexities and contexts around the ambiguous term “postdigital,” particularly the “messy” entanglements of the digital and analog, material and symbolic, technology and sociality that it encompasses. The editors also introduce the concept of media constellations as the interwoven relationalities at the heart of a postdigital society whose “post” does not mean “overcome” but rather that digitality has become part of complex, everyday interrelationships and correlations. With its particular interest in participation, the book’s introduction lays out how participating in the “postdigital condition” is tightly knit with power relations and political economies. This performative aspect in an educational context means that contemporary media constellations shape participation just as the practices, actors, and technologies of participation shape these very constellations.