Machiavelli, a man of 'his' time: R.B.J. Walker and The Prince

This paper is a critique of R.B.J. Walker's The Prince and the 'Pauper' fro m a post-structural perspective. Specifically Walker, based on Quentin Skin ner, John Pocock, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida establishes, through the language and concepts that become attached to his work, what 'postmoder nity'' means, so that it becomes certain/determined. Moreover, he reads Mac hiavelli and finds a correspondence between the meaning he established and the author, and not with the Realist concepts, which Machiavelli is traditi onally associated with. In other words, through a juxtaposition of language and postmodern themes, Walker claims an 'authentic' postmodernity and that Machiavelli himself is postmodern through finding evidence of this in the text. As a consequence, Walker downplays instead of supplements these autho rs' contributions, and so detracts from the context of his own vision. This paper is not, therefore, an indictment of Walker's work, but an affirmatio n of its calling and an insistence that it is still valid/relevant. To enga ge a critical work critically, is to carry on the tradition of criticism it began.