logocentrism
The pre-eminence of speech as the source of meaning, as opposed to an object world independent of speech waiting to be discovered. It is associated with the theory of deconstruction whose major philosopher Jacques Derrida famously declared that ‘there is nothing outside the text’. For gender theorists, logocentrism was initially important as a means of moving away from an essentialist view of identity where meaning is inherent in the object or person and therefore fixed and unchangeable, but under the impact of new materialism from the mid-1990s onwards the exclusive focus on language as the source of meaning has been called into question. Feminists have objected to logocentrism as a patriarchal cultural mode which ignores the unconscious, drives, and desires.... ...
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