The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Phallocentric

Phallocentric: Centered on or privileging the masculine, a nonnatural characteristic ascribed to institutions (including literature) and culture more generally by certain deconstructors, feminist critics, and psychoanalytic critics. When used by feminists, the term is almost synonymous with patriarchal. Psychoanalytic critics usually use the term to suggest that psychic life is conditioned by the phallus as understood by twentieth-century French psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan. Deconstructors often prefer twentieth-century French poststructuralist theorist Jacques Derrida’s term phallogocentric, which through the insertion of an allusion to the word logos (Greek for “word,” “speech,” and “reason”) implies that the masculine gender is privileged in Western language and thought, which Derrida described as being logocentricm.