Toward a Pragmatics of Complex Transformation

concepts are largely metaphorical. (p. 3) The first line hints at Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the second reminds of Freud’s psychoanalysis, the third recalls Dewey’s pragmatism. What’s more is that complexity science is not just interested in describing complex phenomena. It joins with psychoanalysis as one of the few Western discourses with an explicit interest in articulating what might be described as a pragmatics of transformation. Complexivists, that is, are as much interested in occasioning complexity and triggering transformations as they are in studying existing instances of complexity. Two of the conditions that are necessary have been deliberately incorporated into the structure of this inaugural issue of the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies—namely, diversity among parts and the juxtaposition of that diversity in ways that might trigger new individual and/or collective possibilities. These same sorts of conditions can be deliberately woven into classrooms, but almost never are. Education hasn’t paid much attention to this particular pragmatics of transformation—unlike business, economics, politics, ethics, law, and several branches of medicine, including immunology and neurology. I suspect that part of the reason for the slow uptake among educationalists has to do with the overwhelming commitment to linearity and linear causality, inscribed in institutional structures, classroom resources, developmentalist theories, curriculum intentions, and pedagogical methods. It may be that, until we are collectively willing to face the prospect that the formal educational project is deeply problematic, complexity science must be relegated to that class of educationally unbearable discourses that includes (among its many honorable members) psychoanalysis, pragmatism, and poststructuralism.