What is logocentrism?

Jacques Derrida, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Jacques Derrida answers

Logocentrism names the determination of being as presence — the long history of Western metaphysics insofar as it has organized itself around the logos as the privileged medium of truth, meaning, and self-identical presence.¹ The history of metaphysics is, on this reading, the history of a reduction of the trace, an attempt to secure meaning by anchoring it to something fully present, self-transparent, and self-sufficient.

What makes the voice the privileged site of this structure is the experience of hearing-oneself-speak — s'entendre-parler — in which the subject seems to take the signifier from itself, emit it, and be affected by it simultaneously, without any exterior mediation.² The voice appears not to borrow from outside; it circulates in a closed loop of pure auto-affection.

Writing, by contrast, invokes an "exterior," "sensible," "spatial" signifier that interrupts this self-presence — which is precisely why the history of logocentrism is also a history of the subordination and exclusion of writing. Phonocentrism and logocentrism are, in this sense, the same movement.³ The sub-determinations of presence are numerous: presence of the thing to the sight as eidos, presence as substance or essence (ousia), temporal presence as the now (nun), the self-presence of the Cartesian cogito, the co-presence of the other and of the self in intersubjectivity.⁴

From Descartes through Hegel, what shifts is the form of this presence — from the ideality of the eidos to the substantiality of ousia to the representation of the idea as modification of a self-present, self-certain substance — but the governing determination remains.⁵ God, in this epoch, is the name for what makes absolutely pure self-knowledge possible, the logos as infinite self-presence.⁶

The practical consequence for deconstruction is this: an opposition of metaphysical concepts — speech/writing, presence/absence, intelligible/sensible — is never a confrontation of two symmetrical terms but a hierarchy, an order of subordination.⁷ Deconstruction cannot simply neutralize that hierarchy; it must perform a double gesture — reversal and displacement — reversing the classical opposition first (because the terms are not equal), then displacing the entire system, because reversal alone would merely reinstate the structure with the poles exchanged.⁸

The "new" concept of writing that emerges from this operation is grafted onto the old name precisely in order to maintain the force of intervention in the constituted historical field.⁹

Sources

1. If the history of metaphysics is the history of a determination of being as presence, if its adventure merges with that of logocentrism, and if it is produced wholly as the reduction of the trace...

   Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172

2. Such is at least the experience—or consciousness—of the voice: of hearing (understanding)-oneself-speak [s'entendre-parler].

   Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172

3. That experience lives and proclaims itself as the exclusion of writing, that is to say of the invoking of an 'exterior,' 'sensible,' 'spatial' signifier interrupting self-presence.

   Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172

4. presence of the thing to the sight as eidos, presence as substance/essence/existence (ousia), temporal presence as point (stigmè) of the now or of the moment (nun), the self-presence of the cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the other and of the self, intersubjectivity as the intentional phenomenon of the ego...

   Of Grammatology, pp. 63–64

5. Before that, the identity of presence offered to the mastery of repetition was constituted under the 'objective' form of the ideality of the eidos or the substantiality of ousia. Thereafter, this objectivity takes the form of representation, of the idea as the modification of a self-present substance, conscious and certain of itself at the moment of its relationship to itself.

   Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172

6. God is the name and the element of that which makes possible an absolutely pure and absolutely self-present self-knowledge. From Descartes to Hegel and in spite of all the differences that separate the different places and moments in the structure of that epoch, God's infinite understanding is the other name for the logos as self-presence.

   Of Grammatology, pp. 171–172

7. an opposition of metaphysical concepts (e.g., speech/writing, presence/absence, etc.) is never the confrontation of two terms, but a hierarchy and the order of a subordination.

   Limited Inc, p. 28

8. Deconstruction cannot be restricted or immediately pass to a neutralization: it must, through a double gesture, a double science, a double writing—put into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system.

   Limited Inc, p. 28

9. To leave to this new concept the old name of writing is tantamount to maintaining the structure of the graft, the transition and indispensable adherence to an effective intervention in the constituted historical field.

   Limited Inc, p. 28