ABSTRACT
As directly as it can be put, ‘postmodernism’ names a tendency since 1970 or so to doubt the tenets of ‘modernism’. In economics it would be against the high modernism, for example, of Paul Samuelson’s program. Though postmodernism more generally has been appropriated by writers innocent of economics or maths or statistics, there is nothing inevitable in this. I am saying that in adopting a pomo attitude an economist need not fear contamination from literary critics, psychoanalysts, and the politically correct. Postmodernism can be given an economic and classical liberal – I did not say ‘conservative’ or ‘reactionary’ – reading.
