Binary Opposition

Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes were two French theorists who worked on the idea that reality must some what still be 'out there' somewhere, from this they proposed that the meaning that we give to objects/subjects must be culturally created. Which in fact means that we accept the meaning we have given things. They then went further to realize that we would never understand what something was completely if we did not have the binary opposite to it. Barthes then went onto say that we subconsciously apply a similar binary opposite when we interpret the meaning of something. Later on, Jacques Derrida a French philosopher took their idea further and claimed that 'binary pairs' are not equal and that in fact a culture normally tends to favour one side of the pair and take it in an optimistic way and that the other opposite is not as focused on and that it is seen in pessimistic way. Also another thing with binary opposites we subconsciously put the one we prefer first without knowing.