Perspectives - Postmodernism key terms 3

1. Metanarrative - a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality. In critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.
2. Essentialism - a belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence
3. Utopian - modelled on or aiming for a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic
4. Axiomatic - self-evident or unquestionable
5. Dystopian - relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one
6. Scepticism - a sceptical attitude; doubt as to the truth of something
7. Relativism - the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute
8. Pluralism - a condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority, etc., coexist