Plea for Fairness ALTHOUGH it is often held nowadays that the reader has freedom to read a text in terms of his/her location and experience and that the author cannot claim control over its meaning, I would argue that this leaves the reader with the responsibility of reading a text as a whole, and with fairness. It also excludes comments on the author's possible motivations. It is this which has provoked me to respond briefly to O P Bakshi's review of my book Power and Political Theory (EPW, February 15, 1992).