Phallogocentrism
{{Short description|Theory in literary analysis}}
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In critical theory and deconstruction, phallogocentrism is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Jacques Derrida |encyclopedia = Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/jacques-derrida/ |access-date=2023-05-28 |via = iep.utm.edu |lang = en-US}} The term is a blend word of the older terms phallocentrism (focusing on the masculine point of view) and logocentrism (focusing on language in assigning meaning to the world).
Derrida and others identified phonocentrism, or the prioritizing of speech over writing, as an integral part of phallogocentrism. Derrida explored this idea in his essay "Plato's Pharmacy".{{cite book |last=Derrida |first=Jacques |year=1991 |title=Dissemination |publisher=Chicago University Press |isbn=978-0226143347 |location=Chicago, IL}}
Background
In contemporary literary and philosophical works concerned with gender, the term "phallogocentrism" is commonplace largely as a result of the writings of Jacques Derrida, the founder of the philosophy of deconstruction, which is considered by many academics to constitute an essential part of the discourse of postmodernism.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Deconstruction |encyclopedia = Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/deconstruction/ |access-date=2023-05-28 |via = iep.utm.edu |lang = en-US}} Deconstruction is a philosophy of "indeterminateness" and its opposing philosophy, "determinateness". According to deconstruction, indeterminate knowledge is "aporetic", i.e., based on contradictory facts or ideas ("aporias") that make it impossible to determine matters of truth with any degree of certitude; determinate knowledge, on the other hand, is "apodictic", i.e., based on facts or ideas that are considered to be "true", from one perspective or another.
The phallogocentric argument is premised on the claim that modern Western culture has been, and continues to be, both culturally and intellectually subjugated by "logocentrism" and "phallocentrism". Logocentrism is the term Derrida uses to refer to the philosophy of determinateness, while phallocentrism is the term he uses to describe the way logocentrism itself has been genderized by a "masculinist (phallic)" and "patriarchal" agenda. Hence, Derrida intentionally merges the two terms phallocentrism and logocentrism as "phallogocentrism".
The French feminist thinkers of the school of écriture féminine also share Derrida's phallogocentric reading of 'all of Western metaphysics'. For example, {{harvp|Cixous|Clément|1975}} decry the "dual, hierarchical oppositions" set up by the traditional phallogocentric philosophy of determinateness, wherein "death is always at work" as "the premise of woman's abasement", woman who has been "colonized" by phallogocentric thinking.{{cite book |first1=H. |last1=Cixous |author1-link = Hélène Cixous |first2=C. |last2=Clément |author2-link = Catherine Clément |year = 1975 |publication-date = 1986 |title = The Newly Born Woman |translator-first=Betsy |translator-last=Wing |series=Theory and History of Literature |volume=24 |location = Minneapolis, MN |publisher = University of Minnesota Press |page = [https://archive.org/details/newlybornwoman0000cixo/page/65 65] |isbn = 0-8166-1466-0 |url = https://archive.org/details/newlybornwoman0000cixo/page/65 }} According to Cixous & Clément, the 'crumbling' of this way of thinking will take place through a Derridean-inspired, anti-phallo / logocentric philosophy of indeterminateness.
Critique
Swedish cyberphilosophy authors Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist propose a critique of Derrida's interpretation of phallogocentrism in their works.{{cite book |first1 = A. |last1 = Bard |author1-link = Alexander Bard |first2 = J. |last2 = Söderqvist |author2-link = Jan Söderqvist |year = 2014 |title = Syntheism: Creating God in the Internet age}}{{cite book |first1 = A. |last1 = Bard |author1-link = Alexander Bard |first2 = J. |last2 = Söderqvist |author2-link = Jan Söderqvist |year = 2018 |title = Digital Libido: Sex, power, and violence in the network society }}
{{Where|date=July 2021}}{{full citation|date=April 2024}} They advocate a return to phallic vision as fundamental and necessary for western civilization after 1945. They regard this phallic return as materialized through technology rather than through ever more academic discourse. In response to Derrida et al., Bard & Söderqvist propose that the phallogocentric project – which they call eventology – rather needs to be complemented with a return to nomadology, or the myth of the eternal return of the same, a matrichal {{sic}} renaissance which they claim has already materialized in system theory and complexity theory, from which both feminism and androgynism are merely later but welcome effects. According to Bard & Söderqvist it is merely the centrism and not the phallogos in itself which has ever been problematic.{{Importance inline|date=November 2021}}
French philosopher Catherine Malabou, part-time collaborator with Derrida himself, has taken a similar constructive critical approach to the idea of phallogocentrism, for example {{harvp|Malabou|2007}}.{{cite book |first = C. |last = Malabou |author-link = Catherine Malabou |year = 2007 |title = Les nouveaux blessés |lang = fr |trans-title = The newly injured }}{{full citation|date=April 2024}} Going into dialogue with psychoanalytic masters like Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and most recently Alain Badiou – to whose philosophy of the event, Malabou responds with a radical traumatology firmly rooted in the neurosciences – her take is simply that psychoanalysis is inadequate to respond to the challenges she forwards due to its phallogocentrist fixation, a dilemma she believes the neurosciences are better fit to solve. The name of her solution to this problem is plasticity.{{Citation needed|date=July 2021}}
See also
References
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External links
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- {{cite web |title = Biases of the ear and eye – Logocentrism |website = aber.ac.uk |place = Aberdeen, Sc, UK |publisher = University of Aberdeen |url=http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/litoral/litoral4.html }}
- {{cite conference |first = Carole |last = Dely |orig-date = June 2006 |publication-date = 31 October 2007 |title = Jacques Derrida: The 'perchance' of a coming of the otherwoman |conference = International Phenomenology Colloquium |via = Sens Public (sens-public.org) |place = Porto Alegre, Brazil / Catholic University of Porto Alegre |issn = 2104-3272 |quote = The deconstruction of phallogocentrism from duel to duo |lang = fr, en |url = http://www.sens-public.org/article.php3?id_article=312 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120208071831/http://www.sens-public.org/article.php3?id_article=312 |archive-date = 2012-02-08 |df = dmy-all}}
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{{Critical theory}}