The sequel

More Barthes:

. . . if you like words to the point of succumbing to them, you exclude yourself from the law of the signified. . . . My body itself (and not only my ideas) can make up to words, can be in some sense created by them: today, I discover on my tongue a red patch which appears to be an abrasion, or in medical terms an excoriation--painless, moreover, which fits in perfectly, I decide, with cancer! But examined closely, this sign is merely a faint desquamation of the whitish film which covers the tongue. I cannot swear that this whole little obsessive scenario has not been worked up in order to use that rare word, so attractive by dint of its exactitude: excoriation.