claims of rationality, and the hubris of thinking society on the way to real truth
rather than local belief, are the objects of post-modern scorn. A central concept
of post-modern thinking, the idea of a ‘metanarrative’ can best display what it is
all about. The modern age, post-modernists claim, thinks in terms of a great
narrative or explanatory story which applies to us all, and gives us universally
valid truth. Post-modernists argue that we are all prisoners of our conditions,
our characteristics, our communities, and that only local narratives, no longer
presented as ‘meta’ can tell us our own partial truths. Clearly this can produce
what seem like very reactionary arguments. Post-modernists have very little
time for grand debates about human rights, for example, and positively loathe
Marxism, because both are based on claims to absolute and unvarying truths.
At the same time, the typical causes espoused by post-modernism are, by those
old enlightenment standards, rather radical. Gender and sexual identity, and
racial and ecological concerns all figure strongly in approval and explication by
post-modern thought, its proponents suggesting, with some merit, that classic
liberalism and classic Marxist thought alike, were deficient in their concern for
gays, transsexuals, blacks, and those who set the global ecological status higher
than scientific progress, whether capitalist or Marxist.
Whether post-modernism, which is already ageing at the beginning of the
21st century, will fade away and be no more important in the long term of
intellectual progress than, for example, Dadaism is yet to be seen. But as post-
modernists do not believe in the concept of progress, it may matter less to
them.
Power
Power, by which is meant here social, economic or political power, is at the
heart both of actual political conflict, and of the discipline ofpolitical
science. Despite this it is extremely hard to give any useful definition, and
not only are most definitions contentious, but some theorists hold thatvalue
freedomcannot exist in accounts either of what power is or when it exists.
The safest definitions are, typically, formal, and perhaps vacuous. Thus one
very common definition of power in modern political science is ‘the ability of
A to make B do something B would not choose to do’. The trouble is that such
definitions raise almost more questions than they answer. For example, if I get
B to want something they ‘would not otherwise want’, which I want, am I not
exercising power? Or, suppose two people both try to get B to do (different)
unwanted things, which is to be seen as the more powerful? How does one deal
with ‘potential’ power, the power I might well have, but choose not to use, to
make someone do something? What are the sources of power? Above all, there
is a problem of measuring power. This is not simply an erudite quibble, because
Power