Phallocentric

In a general sense, the concept of phallocentric refers to male-centred discourse or from the perspective of a privileged masculinity. More particularly, the idea has been deployed in reference to the use of the term Phallus within psychoanalytic theory where the Phallus is held to be a symbolic transcendental universal signifier of the source, self-origination and unifying agency of the subject. This is argued to be especially the case in relation to psychoanalysis as developed by Lacan.

For its critics, the phallocentric character of psychoanalysis follows from Freud’s assertion that women would ‘naturally’ see their genitals as inferior in tandem with the claim that genital heterosexual activity that stresses masculine power and feminine passivity is the normal form of sexuality. Further, in Lacan's reworking of Freud, the Oedipal moment marks the formation of the subject into the Law of the Father, and thus entry into the symbolic order itself. That is, the power of the Phallus is understood to be necessary to the very existence of subjects. For Lacan, the symbolic Phallus:

• Acts as the ‘transcendental signifier’ of the power of the symbolic order.
• Serves to split the subject away from desire for the mother thus enabling subject formation.
• Marks the necessary interruption of the mother–child dyad and the subject's entry into the symbolic (without which there is only psychosis).
• Allows the subject to experience itself as a unity by covering over a sense of lack.

For critics such as Irigaray, the centrality of the Phallus within Lacan's argument renders ‘woman’ an adjunct term so that the feminine is always repressed and entry into the symbolic continually tied to the father/Phallus. Indeed, for Irigaray the whole of Western philosophy is phallocentric so that the very idea of ‘woman’ is not an essence per se but rather that which is excluded. Here the feminine is understood to be the unthinkable and the unrepresentable ‘Other’ of phallocentric discourses.