Before a body can be given meaning,

Before a body can be given meaning, then, it must be contrasted to all other objects that are not to be considered bodies. Although this distinction is usually invisible—except in the kind of contemporary fiction that I have made frequent reference to here—the implications of particular ways of individuating bodies resonate within the whole narrative structure of the story. We can say that this preliminary stage of individuation in many ways has far more profound effects on the narrative than the more visible and obvious ways in which it is invested explicitly with semantic meaning.