Binary Opposition

A late twentieth Century theory called 'Structuralism' was created by two French theorists called Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes which included and developed the idea of binary opposition. They worked on the idea that reality is always 'out there' and that reality can only exists in the form of ideas e.g. that we can only get as close to reality as the idea of reality itself. This then made the theorists believe that because of this that the meanings we put to things must be 'culturally created' as people accept the meanings of things by what someone else has said ( or has put a signified and signifier together). Binary opposition then comes into play as the theorists realised that meaning can never reside entirely within itself but only from a complex appreciation of its opposite which they called 'binary opposition'.

Words and images act as symbols for ideas and only make meaning because of the difference between opposing ideas. An example of this would be hot, which uses the word 'hot' and the colour of red and orange to symbolise heat which only makes sense in comparison to 'cold' as one cannot be true without the other.

The word 'hero' depends for its meaning on the existence of it binary opposite, 'villain' or 'bad-guy'. One cannot be gauged without the other. There are many examples of binary opposite e.g. 'dark/light', 'good/bad', 'strong/weak', 'gay/straight', 'interesting/boring', 'male/female'.