The truth of networked learning lies at its borders

In his book 'Understanding Poststrucrualism' (2005, Acumen) James Williams provides a very helpful set of philosophical criticisms of radical poststructrualism, together with some incisive counter criticisms. Williams seems to veer towards positing an essence of poststructuralism (doubly difficult given the nonessentialist nature of a slippery intellectual movement that dodges its very own '-ism') around "the limits of knowledge play an unavoidable role at its core". This strange claim means, according to Williams, that any settled form of knowledge or moral good is made by its limits and cannot be defined independently of them (p.2), e.g. the truth of a nation is at its borders. A limit is not defined in opposition to the core; it is a positive thing in its own right. If this is the case then poststructuralism calls into question the role of traditional forms of knowledge in setting definitions since these traditional forms only gain meaning via the (non traditional) limits of knowledge. The work of the limit is to open up the core and to change our sense of its role as a stable truth and value.

Here's where a poststructuralist-inspired definition of networked learning comes into play. 'Poststructuralism provides a thorough disruption of our secure sense of meaning and reference in language, of our understanding of our senses and of the arts, of our understanding of identity, of our sense of history and its role in the present, and of our understanding of language as something free of the work of the unconscious' (Williams, p.3). In the same fashion, a poststructuralist perspective on networked learning thoroughly disrupts our secure sense of meaning & reference in the language of traditional executive education, of our understanding of the identity and purpose of business schools and of the stable identity of the consumer such institution's product.