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Placing man at the centre; a masculine way of representing and approaching the world that some theorists root in male genitalia and a masculine libidinal economy. It is characterized by a unified, self-controlled, and distanced drive towards a singular truth or goal (i.e. a notion of progress). Cixous (1980) argues that it is intertwined with logo-centrism (the fixing of meaning in concepts), such that meaning is fixed in a set of hierarchized and sexualized binary oppositions (hence the term phallogocentrism). Culture/nature is a central organizing dichotomy within phallogocentric thought, with culture conceived as masculine and active, and nature as feminine and passive. Many critiques of phallocentrism have roots in psychoanalysis. They have led French feminists such as Cixous and male philosophers such as Lacan and Derrida to explore feminine (more open and multiple) ways of writing and reading, an exploration that Jardine (1985) terms gynesis and evaluates with some suspicion.
Geography intersects with phallocentrism in a number of ways. Jardine (1985) attributes the critiques of phallocentrism (e.g. the disbelief in origins, master narratives, humanism, and progress) that have been developed throughout the twentieth century to the end of European imperial domination, as well as to the growing influence of feminist voices (see feminist geographies). She interprets gynesis, the \'solution\' to phallocentrism proposed by male philosophers, as a working out of male paranoia: men began to desire to be women as a way to avoid becoming the object of female desire. (The frequent feminization of non-European countries is especially interesting in the context of this interpretation: see Orientalism.) Critiques of phallogocentrism also intersect with conceptions of nature insofar as they are tied to attempts to displace \'man\' from the controlling centre and to refigure nature in active, equal terms. To the extent that humanism and phallocentrism are intertwined, the critiques of that latter extend to humanistic geography. Framed through the analogous concept of masculinism, Rose (1993) claims that elements of phallocentrism pervade geography as a discipline. (See also sexuality and geography.)Â (GP)
References Cixous, H. 1980: Sorties. In E. Marks and I. de Courtivron, eds, New French feminisms. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 90-8. Jardine, A. 1985: Gynesis: configurations of women and modernity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rose, G. 1993: Feminism and geography. Oxford: Polity Press and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. |
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