Logocentrism

From Geography

Logocentrism

The term logocentrism was introduced by Jacques Derrida. He used this term to refer to the tendency in Western philosophy to see ‘logos’ (reason, speech, law) as the central principle of philosophy . Ever since Plato Western philosophy has valued the absolute truth over peoples experiences, impressions and spoken words about the world (Scott, n.d.). A hierarchy is constructed in which ‘the real’ is valued over ‘words spoken about the real’. But Derrida argues language is flawed, and the language we use to talk about reality is actually not the same as reality (superglossary, n.d.). Yet we have no other way to communicate about reality than with our limited language, which means it is wrong (according to Derrida) to give reason and speech such a central role in philosophy.

Logocentrism is part of Derrida’s deconstruction strategy. With this way of reading texts he challenges certain axioms of Western thought. In texts logocentrism produces meaning through a binary structure of positive and negative (Gibson, p. 97). In this frame, terms are presented as opposites. Of these opposites, one term seems positive and the other negative. Eg. Black and white, strong and weak, good and bad. Feminist poststructuralists suggested logocentrism should be called phallogocentrism because of the way in which one side of the binary is considered positive and more dominant and important than the other (Gibson, p. 98).

Created by Judith Nijenhuis, S3009270

references

Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2000). Poststructuralist interventions. In, E. Sheppard & T. Barnes (eds.) A Companion to Economic Geography. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 95-110.

Superglossary. (n.d.). Logocentrism. Vinddatum 11 september 2011, op http://www.superglossary.com/Definition/Literature/Logocentrism.html

Scott, A. (n.d.). Logocentrism. Vinddatum 11 september 2011, op http://www.handspeak.com/byte/l/index.php?byte=logocentrism