Logocentrism

Logocentrism is a key term in deconstruction; it argues that there is a persistent but morbid centering of Logos (meaning thought, truth, law, reason, logic, word, and the Word) in Western thought since Plato. Putting Logos at the center of discourse gives it an unquestioned status of priority and privilege—a maneuver sometimes extended to a privileging of the male order in the form of “phallogocentrism.” Jonathan Culler, following Jacques Derrida, defines logocentrism as “the orientation of philosophy toward an order of meaning… conceived as existing in itself, as foundation.” Logocentrism is the fundamental error of mistaking what is an arbitrary and artificial construct for a verifiable event. (Handbook to Literature)

Writing Exercise

Choose an excerpt of dialogue between two characters within a manuscript you’ve already written. Study the rhetoric that the two characters currently employ. Do they both believe in “absolute truths” that are unquestionable? Does one character avoid absolute truths? How might the dialogue deepen if one character were to deny logocentrism in rhetoric—i.e., an absolute truth that some individuals hold, such as the existence of God? Studying the underlying philosophies behind your characters’ motivations will yield more nuanced and three-dimensional characters.

Submit to Eckleburg

We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise.  We are always looking for tightly woven short works under 2,000 words and short-shorts around 500 words. No multiple submissions but simultaneous is fine as long as you withdraw the submission asap through the submissions system. During the summer and winter months, we run our Writers Are Readers, Too, fundraiser when submissions are open only to subscribers. During the fall and spring, we open submissions for regular unsolicited submissions.

Note: We consider fiction, poetry and essays that have appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as already being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. We ask that work published at Eckleburg not appear elsewhere online, and if republished in print, original publication credit is given to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. One rare exception is our annual Gertrude Stein Award, which allows for submissions of previously published work, both online and print. Submit your work.

Eckleburg Workshops

Take advantage of our $5 work-at-your-own-pace writing workshops where you can create new work as well as fine tune work you’ve already written. Fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and more, Eckleburg Workshops offer writing prompts and craft techniques that will take your work to the next level. 

Work with a Reedsy Editor for Individualized Attention

Submit your work for developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, editorial assessment and more at Reedsy.com, where hundreds of experienced, awarded writers and editors are ready to read your work and help you make it the best it can be.

Sources

• The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present. Eric Kandel.
• Caughie, John. Theories of Authorship. 1981.
• “Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.
• Cognitive Neuropsychology Section, Laboratory of Brain and Cognition.
• Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.
• The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 
• Grant, Barry Keith. Auteurs & Authorship: Film Reader. 2008.
• A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.
• Jeong, Seung-hoon and Jeremy Szaniawski. The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship 21st Century Cinema. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016.
• New Oxford American Dictionary. Edited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.
• The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Martin Puchner, et al.
• The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. Gideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.
• Sellors, C. Film Authorship: Auteurs & Other Myths. 2011.
• Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner
• Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.
• Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

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