What is male logocentrism? (Literary term)

The Greek word "logos" means "language", "definition", and its aliases are existence, essence, source, truth, absolute, etc. They are all true statements of what everything is. They are the true description of what everything is, and the basis of all systems of thought and language. For Derrida, the entire Western metaphysical tradition, from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Levi-Strauss, is "logocentric". Derrida points out that so-called "logocentrism" is a combination of present-centered ontology and verbal language-centered linguistics; it is the belief that the language of presence is capable of perfecting the expression of thought and reaching the objective truth of the real world. Presence is the source of ontology, teleology, and thus of real truth, and therefore Derrida sees "logocentrism", which opposes presence, as the fundamental target of his attack. Thus the category of "female" is only fictional, and Derrida says: "Perhaps ...... 'female' is not a determinable identity, perhaps female does not distance itself from other things, cannot claim itself elsewhere. ...... Perhaps the female - a featureless, shapeless simulacrum - is a fault line of distance, a distance beyond distance, rhythm of the gap, distance itself." [1] An effective feminism can only be a feminism of total negation, deconstructing everything and refusing to construct anything. And this is what American feminist critic Mary Parkway summarizes in her essay "Feminism and Deconstructionism" as the most significant contribution of deconstructionism to feminism: namely, the elimination of the planning of mystical features. Parkway points out that one of Derrida's critiques of Western metaphysics is the demystification of the character of "presence," the idea of which depends on language and which is always elusive. It is elusive, it exists only in a relative sense, and it is not the basis of truth. Parkway argues that deconstructionism analyzes the idea that "feminine" is merely a product of society and has no natural basis, and that "feminine" is a term whose definition depends on the context in which it is discussed, not on certain sexual organs or social experiences. Parkway believes that deconstructionism's elimination of the mystery of the here and now makes political sense [2]. One of the effects that Derrida uses to achieve the elimination of the mystical character of presence is to deconstruct dichotomies. "Logocentrism" makes the traditional Western approach to metaphysical thinking based on a positive and negative dichotomy, such as: soul/body, nature/culture, male/female, language/word, truth/falsehood, and so on. This dichotomy is not an equal juxtaposition. Logocentrism forces the second term to be subordinate to the first term by establishing the priority of the first term, which is the first, essential, central, and original, while the second term is the second, non-essential, peripheral, and derivative. Such as putting good before evil, affirmation before negation, etc. Joynson Kahler says: "In the traditional philosophical opposition various terms do not live in peace*** but are in an intense hierarchical order. The domination of one term over another (axiomatically, logically) takes precedence. To deconstruct this opposition at a given moment is to invert the hierarchical order." [3] Derrida's critique is one that prompts an inversion of the repression of these hierarchical oppositions, where the ruling dominant power of those prioritized hierarchies can never be restored on the premises. However, the inversion is never one-time, one-way, reductive; Derrida refuses to establish any center, but rather eliminates the center itself. "Indeed, the most mesmerizing aspect of this critical recourse to the new status of discourse is its blatant affirmation of the renunciation of all referential significance to the center, to the subject, to the significance of the status particular, to the origin, and even to the absolute primordial." [4]

It is well known that we live in a world in which men and women constitute two of the most fundamental oppositions of human existence, and that the development of patriarchal societies has taken this opposition to even greater extremes. According to feminists, modern society is a "logocentric" society, as well as a "pallocentric" or "phallocentric" society. Thus, the Western tradition of "logocentrism" and the male-dominated culture of patriarchy and phallocentrism are one and the same, leading to the concept of "phallocentrism". The term "phallo-centrism" was derived from this to indicate that the world is a world ruled by a male-centered mindset. Under the influence of deconstruction theory, feminism is fundamentally opposed to binary thinking and limits the use of deconstruction strategies to the male/female hierarchical opposition. By inverting the fundamental male/female hierarchy, feminism attempts to dismantle the whole set of symbolic order established by patriarchy, and proposes an alternative mode of thinking for integration, which mainly includes the mode of opposing binary and advocating plurality, and the mode of the politics of difference, and so on. Thus, the dismantling of the dichotomy between men and women has become one of the most important "destructive" activities of feminism.

Park also argues that challenging the logic of hierarchy and unity of opposites is the second contribution of deconstructionism to feminism. Deconstructionism, in its model of demystifying identity, does not simply offer an alternative to hierarchical binary oppositions, but exposes the machinations that must be relied upon to establish and maintain hierarchical thinking. The strategy of dismantling the term "feminine" can show how the reduction of all women to a falsely unified "feminine" covers the power utility of ostensibly uniting but actually dividing women's interests [2:340-341]. Derrida's fundamental task is to explore and utilize the principles that subvert the structure of binary oppositions: "extension", "writing", or "remainder".

Most characteristic of deconstructionism is French feminist criticism, such as Julia Kristeva, who argues that women are in an undefinable marginal position and thus have a special significance in eliminating the patriarchal binary, and Helena Sisu, who suggests that the change of women's subjugated position in binary relations must be made through writing, and that women's writing has a truly powerful and destructive force; Lucy Illigduan also offers a sharp critique of the male-female dichotomy upheld by patriarchal societies. Trey Eagleton, a Western Marxist literary critic, analyzes this in great detail: "'Deconstructive criticism' is the name of such a critical operation that can partially subvert such oppositional groups, or partially demonstrate that such groups are subversive of each other in the process of making sense of this paper. Woman is the oppositional item, the 'other' of man. She is the non-man, the defective man, and she has essentially only antithetical value for the first principle of masculinity. But again, man becomes man only by the constant exclusion of this 'other' or antithesis, and thus he prescribes himself relative to her. ...... Not only does his own existence depend parasitically on woman, on the activity of excluding and subordinating her. Moreover, one of the reasons why this exclusion is so necessary is that she may not be so 'other' after all. Perhaps she is a sign of something within man, and that is something he needs to repress, needs to expel from his own being, needs to relegate to an insured exoticism beyond his own definite boundaries." [5] It can be seen that this deconstructive strategy provides a powerful argument for feminist analysis of how the "feminine" becomes the "other" and is subjugated to male texts and societies.

Logocentrism is an alternative name for Western metaphysics, which is Derrida's general verdict on Western philosophy, following Heidegger's lead. As the name suggests, logocentrism is a logocentric structure, for which we must first understand the meaning of "logos".

"Logos" comes from the ancient Greek, for λoyos (logos) phonetic translation, because it has many meanings, it is difficult to find the corresponding word in Chinese. Guthrie, a famous historian of philosophy, analyzed in detail the usage of this word in philosophy, literature and history in the fifth century B.C. and before in the first volume of the History of Greek Philosophy, and summarized ten meanings: (1) anything that is spoken or written; (2) something mentioned and related to value, such as evaluation and reputation; (3) considerations inherent in the soul, such as thought and reasoning; (4) development of reasons, rationality or argumentation from something spoken or written; (5) the development of a reason or argument into a reason, rationality or argument; (6) the development of a reason, rationality or argument into an argument; and (7) the development of an argument into an argument. (4) from what is said or written to reason, rationality, or argument; (5) the "true Logos" is the truth of things, as opposed to "empty words" or "excuses"; (6) measure, proportion; (7) correspondence, proportionality; (8) a general principle or law, which is a relatively late usage; (9) the faculty of reason, as man is distinguished from the animals by the fact that he has the Logos; (10) a definition or formula expressing the nature of things.