Logocentrism

Entertainment / Literature / Logocentrism: (lit. 'word-centered') Jacques Derrida's term for a tendency to privilege thinking based on a desire for absolute truth, which he associated with Western thought since Plato. He saw this tendency as inherently hierarchical and one which privileged the 'real' over spoken words about the real, and which in turn privileged all spoken language over all written language--cf. Plato's idea of platonic forms. However, since the language we use to talk about reality is not the same thing as reality itself, and since we have no other means of communicating/thinking about reality than flawed language, Derrida saw logocentricism as inherently doomed to failure, an inescapable prison-house of words. Cf. Deconstruction and diff???©rance.
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