Omnicentrism

Omnicentrism refers to the idea that every sign user must become a center in himself.

Origin

Omnicentrism is a concept Gans introduces near the end of Originary Thinking. It’s a kind of riposte to the then popular postmodern concept of “decentering”—for Gans, even decentering doesn’t go far enough; every sign user must become a center in himself. This concept follows from desacralization and the general possibility that a human can occupy the center—while insisting that there is always a "hierarchy" of centers. Insofar as each of us is a center, we are “satellites” of some governing center.