SOURCE: "Critical Literacy and the Postmodern Turn," and "Postscript to 'Critical Literary and the Pstmodern Turn'," in Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern, edited by Colin Lankshear and Peter L. McLaren, State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 379-420; 421-25.

In the following essay, McLaren and Lankshear examine the impact of postmodernist literary thought on education and society.

Educators have become increasingly aware that, far from being a sure means to attaining an accurate and "deep" understanding of the world and one's place within it, the ability to read and write may expose individuals and entire social groups to forms of domination and control by which their interests are subverted. During the past two decades important advances have been made in understanding the ideological role of literacy within the production and "allocation" of economic, political, and cultural power. The "two-sided" character of literacy has been revealed. Developments...