17 Post-modernism took over from modernism, signalling a negative attitude towards modernity and the enlightment.  Modernism is associated with people like Max Weber.      He   found   that   modernity   was   typified   by   pervasiveness   of   the bureaucratic   form   of   Government   and   the   rational   legal   forms   of   political authority.  Weber considered that such modern societies require a mass of rules; these rules are administered by grey and faceless people called bureaucrats.¹³   18 Post-modernism   sets   itself   against   authority.      It   denies   that   there   is   any independent  authority  in  the  law.    According  to  post-modernism,  law  is  merely one discourse among many and has no objective basis.  As such, both philosophy and jurisprudence lack foundations.  They turn into word games.  Under such an analysis the great traditions of the law collapse and there can be no clarity about what  will  follow.    Post-modernist  argument  brings  the  authority  of  law  into serious issue.    19 Naturally,  there  are  many  critics  of  the  post-modernist  message.    That  is  not surprising since the message is that everything is more or less chaos.  There is no basis  to  anything  and  everything  is  fluid.    It  has  a  nihilistic  caste  to  it.  As  an intellectual theory it may have had its day - one certainly hopes so.   20 Much of post-modern thought had its origins in literary criticism.  When viewed through a post-modern lens, the relationship between law and literature leads to uncomfortable conclusions.  Texts are as much a foundation of statute law as they are  of  literature.    Thus,  infirmities  in  the  text  and  particularly  suggestions  that texts have no meaning are particularly destructive. 21 The most distinctive intellectual method  of post-modernism is “deconstruction”.   This is a word, that from a semantic point of view, sits between “destruction” and “construction”.    Deconstruction  seems  to  change  our  usual  understanding  of history.    Indeed,  it  suggests  that  everything  is  contingent  and  unstable.    The principle technique of deconstruction is to destabilise binary oppositions.  This is done by showing that the dominant term presupposes or depends on its opposite.                                                    13   Max   Weber   and   Stanislave   Andreski   (ed   and   trans)   Max   Weber   on   Capitalism, Bureaucracy, and Religion: A Selection of Texts (Allen and Unwin, London, 1983).   8