Phallocentrismis the ideology that thephallus,ormalesexualorgan, is the central element in the organization of the social world. Phallocentrism has been analyzed in literary criticism, psychoanalysis and psychology, linguistics, medicine and health care, and philosophy.
First phase
editThe term was coined in 1927 byErnest Jones,as part of his debate withFreudover the role of thephallic stagein childhood development, when he argued that "men analysts have been led to adopt an unduly phallo-centric view".[1]Drawing on the earlier arguments ofKaren Horney,[2]Jones, in a series of articles, maintained the position that women were not disappointed creatures driven bypenis envy.Instead, this belief was itself a theoretical defense againstcastration anxiety.Freud, however, remained unmoved in his opposition to the Horney/Jones thesis,[3]and his was the predominant psychoanalytic position thereafter, though some likeJanet Malcolmwould modify his position to the effect that "Freud's concept, of course, is... adescriptionof phallocentrism, not a recommendation of it ".[4]
Second phase
editJacques Lacanadded a linguistic turn to the debate with his article "The Signification of the Phallus" (1958/65), arguing that the phallus was not apart-object,an imaginary object, or a physical organ, but rather "the signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified... this signifying function of the phallus".[5]
Jacques Derridachallenged his thesis as phallocentric, and the charge was taken up bysecond-wave feminism,[6]extending the focus of protest from Lacan to Freud,[7]psychoanalysis, and male-centered thinking as a whole:[8]the way that "[t]he phallus, centre of meaning, became man's identity with himself... a masculine symbolic".[9]
However conflict arose within feminism over the issue.[10]Some French feminists, seeing phallocentrism and feminism as two sides of the same coin, sought to make a postphallicist breakthrough.[11]Others, like the English feministJacqueline Rose,while accepting that "Lacan was implicated in the phallocentrism he described,"[12]nevertheless considered his analysis as important for an understanding of how women were constituted as a split subject in society.
Third phase
editFrom apostcolonialperspective, however, such theoretical debates revealed the irrelevance of first world feminists, with their phallocentric preoccupations, to the ordinary life of thesubalternwoman in the Third World;[13]andthird-wave feminism,with its concern for the marginalised, the particular, and forintersectionality,has also broadly seen the theoreticism and essentialism of feminism's earlier concern for phallocentrism as irrelevant to daily female experience.[14]Gayatri Spivaksuggests that feminism needs to negotiate with phallocentrism, and phallocentrism must negotiate with feminism.[15]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^Quoted in K. K. Reithven,Feminist Literary Studies(1990) p. 54
- ^P. Gay,Freud(1989) p. 520
- ^S. Freud,On Sexuality(PFL 7) p. 391-2
- ^Janet Malcolm,The Silent Woman(1995) p. 87
- ^J. Lacan,Ecrits(1997) p. 285-8
- ^J. Childers ed.,The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism(1995) p. 225
- ^P. Gay,Freud(1989) p. 774
- ^E. Ermath,Sequel to History(1992) p. 172-3
- ^Andrea Nye,quoted in E. Ermath,Sequel to History(1992) p. 172-3
- ^E. Amour,Deconstruction(1999) p. 207
- ^E. Roudinesco,Jacques Lacan(2005) p. 365
- ^J. Rose ed.,Feminine Sexuality(1982) p. 56
- ^P. Mackay,Kathy Acker and Transnationalism(2009) p. 94
- ^L. Heywood,Third Wave Agenda(1997) p. 135
- ^G. C. Spivak,The Post-Colonial Critic(2014) p. 147