Linda Hutcheon: Dencentering the PostModern: The Ex-centric

In a helpful and interesting essay Hutcheon guides us to what seems to be the focus of modern day Postmodernism: the ex-centric.

Primarily, there are some points that stick out to me that are interesting and pertinent to her essay: 1. The fact that the ex-centric (and Postmodernism (PM) within itself) is dependent in nature upon the very things that is purports to deconstruct or deny and so on. For example, the ex-centric by nature is dependent on the fact that it is marginal and not center. If there lacked a center, the ex-centric would cease to function as it does. And this is important as well for Hutcheon (H), the center, according to Derrida, is a function, never a empirical, real thing, but rather a function, a notion that gives people a state of mind, a completementary element. However, this does not deny the reality of the center. Sexism, partriarchy, racism, and so on all operate through the notion of the center and the marginal. What is important to note is that the center is never a monolithic, single thing. But a social, political, religious, cultural function.

2. H. notes how PM places emphasis upon the ex-centric, but she does not uphold the fact that PM in a theoretical field of the marginal, and if it is, she denies it as an appropriate one. I think this is primarily due to the nature of organizational groupings within themselves. To politically organize and create movement toward a cause due to specific grievances is to assert yourself as the center.And the marginal are distinctly marginal, in relation to the center. However, H does not the emphasis and attention that PM has given the ex-centric, and upholds this as a good and wrothy thing. But, comes back to the point, that PM constantly pivots on the notion of relational difference: the ex-centric to the center.

3. Finally, an interesting point to me lies in the nature of an ex-centric theory, and this helps clarify the relational difference that upholds so much of PM's understanding of the marginal, the ex-centric. Within the political realm, PM's focus upon the ex-centric may be viewed as reactionary, and therefore not a movement that upholds real, true goals, but instead the grievances, and the goals of the movement exist purely in relation to specific social, cultural circumstances that exist today. Though not a complete erasure of the legitimacy of the movement, what this claim does is that it removes some of the organic strength of the claims. The argument may be made that the ex-centric do not need to be placed in an equitable and just situation, but rather that the center's relationship to the marginal should be augmented.


Through various expositions with literary texts, H. elucidates how the marginal movement is exhibitied through literature. Examples such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Salman Rushdie, Gayl Jones and Joy Kogawa bring to light the varying states of the ex-centric. This is an interesting and pertinent point to bring up: the multiplicity of the ex-centric. PM is not attempting to replace the center with the ex-centric:

Postmodernism does not move the marginal to the cetner. It does not invert the valuing of centers into that of peripheries and border, as much as use that paradoxical doubled positioning to critique the inside from both the outisde and the inside.

And that, to me, is a major point of H.'s essay, that the ex-centric, based on a relational difference schema to the center and other ex-centrics is exemplified through PM literature, art, architecture and so on.