Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The analysis of complex objects or systems in terms of binary oppositions, especially in a facile or simplistic way.
  • noun A dichotomy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A pair of opposites.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

binary +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • A rather extreme binarism is thus established, in which the reader is pushed between an absolute trust in fiction’s form-making power, and an absolute scepticism of it.

    2009 May 22 | NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS 2009

  • A rather extreme binarism is thus established, in which the reader is pushed between an absolute trust in fiction’s form-making power, and an absolute scepticism of it.

    James Wood and Ian McEwan in the Headlines Again 2009

  • If this argument sounds like Nicholson Baker's argument about card catalogs, well, it is: we're looking at another computer-based substitution of binarism which is at the root of everything computer for serendipity, with all the losses and gains entailed therein.

    Technological Reading Becca 2008

  • If this argument sounds like Nicholson Baker's argument about card catalogs, well, it is: we're looking at another computer-based substitution of binarism which is at the root of everything computer for serendipity, with all the losses and gains entailed therein.

    Archive 2008-06-01 Becca 2008

  • Trans and bisexuality challenge the gender binarism that lies at the heart of radical and feminist separatisms, and feminists of this ilk reject these identities because they do not fit into a binaried analysis, even where people of these groups support gender and sexual equality – as many do.

    Gender Politics 2009

  • Especially if any biz orientation is essentialized as either + or -, per familiar problematic binarism, which may be as devastating (!) in real life as it appears to be handy (?)/justified (?) in theorizing/modelling.

    Where the Denialists Are | Serendipity 2009

  • That said, my experience with classical feminism, however nuanced some of the thinkers were, always reeked of a binarism not befitting the subject.

    The New Feminism | clusterflock 2008

  • Wanted Man is an uneven book, but despite its flaws it stands as one of the most sophisticated fictional responses to the war on terror yet published, a humane novel which takes on the world's latest binarism and exposes troubling shades of grey.

    Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers 2008

  • In sum, even though the rabbinic semiotics of the body open the gate towards a remarkable self-consciousness about the potential ambiguity of its signs, the same system manages to maintain its fundamental gender binarism in Jewish law.

    Gender Identity In Halakhic Discourse. 2009

  • Such binarism is also discernible in what is ostensibly the most egalitarian legislation: the Law of Defense Service (1949) and the Law of Equal Rights for Women (1951).

    Politics in the Yishuv and Israel. 2009

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