The naked body

I will start with the idea of reversibility.

It is the very definition of the sign. The sign does not just distinguish itself from other signs, but, more importantly, also from the non-sign.

It ejects the non-sign as its outside, as its other, as if it existed before it did. This is its cunning.

But all this cunning is necessary for Naming to happen.

By ejecting the non-sign outside itself, the sign names itself, and at the same time equips itself with the capacity to name the non-sign, now known as the Object or the Referent.

This is the core idea, and this applies also to the Body. As we all know, there are two types: the Naked and the Nude body.

The Naked body is an ideal, like the Thing-in-itself. The Nude, on the other hand, is the condition of all bodies, even the clothed ones. For the Nude body is the body as named by the sign, the body-as-sign named by the sign-as-body.

In short, the sign is the origin and site of Morality.

The sign covers the body like clothing. Nothing is allowed to be naked. Nakedness is immoral not because the physical body is carnal and dirty, but because is it unsigned, unscripted, un-inscribed.

And yet, the sign needs this very nakedness it is trying to cover up. The Naked body, or the Thing-in-itself, is the mythic bedrock of Thought and Morality, its denotative excuse. It is what it posits as its great Other, this non-sign it ejects so that Thought can be thought and Morality can be moral. The sign conceals the nakedness it posits as its Other so that it can speak in its name.

This is the way it makes us forget that, by having the same structure, by positing the Naked body as its end, as the site where it terminates, the sign and the non-sign are actually reversible.