You give me far too much credit for breadth of mind. I thought you nicely summed up the bifurcation between those interested in international relations and those who take Lyotard seriously. In my experience there is very little overlap between the two groups. (I do remember reading an article by a “postmodernist” IR theorist, but it was alternately unintelligible and trivial.) This being said, I’ll cop to being a crotchety old reactionary who gave up on Lyotard after first encountering him in a course on Marxist theory.

RedRob

The first is pointing out that Howard’s classification of ideologies as pro- or anti-Enlightenment is limited to ideologies which have some relevance to realpolitik. Until there’s a Lyotardian government or terrorist organisation I think it’s fair enough for strategic studies to ignore postmodernist ideas, whereas the Cold War made it impossible to ignore Marxism.

The second is more about Howard’s own ideological assumptions. If you are a fan of Lyotard then you’ll find his faith in rationality and enthusiasm for the Enlightenment hard to swallow to say the least.

I can now see that the two points might be more connected than I assumed when I wrote the review. If such a big name in strategic studies can have so unquestioningly swallowed Enlightenment ideology and shown no interest in engaging with Lyotard’s critique of his position, could that be a flaw in his work? Is he assuming that his own rational liberalism is a neutral position from which he can objectively study Marxism as a problem of international relations? And am I falling into the same trap by saying that my two mentions of Lyotard are unrelated and that postmodernism is not relevant to strategic studies? Is that what you were getting at? Or am I looking more confused than ever?

At the risk of appearing snide, the second comment serves as a perfectly adequate rejoinder to first.

RedRob