July 31, 2009

"What other kind of too-narrow focus provides, for one and all, a diagnostic name for itself?"

"If you're ethnocentric, does your culture include a folk dance acknowledging the limitations of your outlook? Is there a beeper that goes off when you get too technocentric? If you're iconocentric, where's the visual image that's going to tell you that you are?"

I'll tell you who's saying that and what he's talking about after you bandy the question around a while.

ADDED: The quote is from "Alphabet Juice," by Roy Blount Jr., and he's talking about the word "logocentric."

9 comments:

rhhardin said...

Don't forget eccentric.

bearbee said...

Doubtless the administration has experts working on a solution.

Bissage said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bissage said...

The beauty of being ironocentric is in the appreciation of its infinite boundaries.

Anonymous said...

My spouse is ironocentric. She won't go out of the house until every wrinkle has been eliminated; no beauty in that kind of obsession.

pdug said...

"logocentric"

or worse:

"phallogocentric"

dbp said...

The realization that the study of over specialization is itself an example of overspecialization!

Michael Haz said...

I am highly Mikeocentric. But that's just me.

Peter Hoh said...

If you're metriccentric, does your gram call to tell you that your meter is running?