What is "decentering"

Usage examples of "decentering".

Nonetheless, at the same time this allows the beginning of what Piaget calls a decentering, where one can decenter or stand aside from the egocentrism of the early mind and instead take the role of other, and this comes to a fruition with a further decentering, a further lessening of egocentrism, in formal operational (where one can take the perspective, not just of others in one's group, but of others in other groups: worldcentric or non-ethnocentric).

As we will see when we follow evolution into the transpersonal domain, these developments converge on an intuition of the very Divine as one's very Self, common in and to all peoples (in fact, all sentient beings), a Self that is the great omega point of this entire series of decreasing egocentrism, of decentering from the small self in order to find the big Selfa Self common in and to all beings and thus escaping the egocentrism (and ethnocentrism) of each.

And that realizationa profound fruition of the decentering thrust of evolutionis the only source of true compassion, a compassion that does not put self first (egocentric) or a particular society first (sociocentric) or humans first (anthropocentric), nor does it try merely in thought to act as if we are all united (worldcentric), but directly and immediately breathes the common air and beats the common blood of a Heart and Body that is one in all beings.

It is the final decentering of all manifest realms, in all domains, at all times, in all places.

The shocking decentering that rationality/science brought is now notorious: Copernicus, Darwin, Freudmen and women are merely links in that vast, vast chain of existence.

They were both also the first to clearly express the theory of relativity inherent in decentering rationality.

In starting out with the express intention of decentering the Ego, of inserting it back into the larger currents of Life and Love, the Eco camps ended up inadvertently, paradoxicallychampioning modes of knowing and feeling that were supremely egocentric and flagrantly narcissistic.

It was precisely the decentering or worldcentering capacity of rationality that allowed cultural differences to be cherished and even glorified, something that had never happened on a large scale anywhere before in history (it is simply inconceivable, for example, that one horticultural society would celebrate the specific values of another).

So this diffusion and decentering, this in-betweenness, isn't merely a formal strategy.

That great decentering, that crumbling of the foundations, so often approached with anguish and loathing -- well, Dino lived it for years, no problem, without a trace of anxiety.

The Empire of Signs, 1982), focusing largely on the traditional aspects (chopsticks, sukiyaki, puppet theatre, Zen Buddhism, haiku) still remaining in the contemporary society, where he sees a propensity for decentering and the privileging of the signifier over the signified that tend to produce "silences" and to diffuse "meaning.

To begin with, the notion of dispersal and decentering can be sensed in the novel's supreme indifference to the categories of writing in which Japanese works have been habitually and rapidly placed, as though the author were intent on collapsing hitherto sacrosanct boundaries.

In the end the novel appears to argue for the postmodern position of decentering and dispersal.