In 1976, Roland Barthes was elected to the prestigious Collège de France. His responsibilities included a weekly lecture in which he reported on his current research. In the academic year 1977/78, Barthes addressed "the Neutral," the "third term" that undermines the binary opposition—the classical organizing principle of structuralism. The Neutral escapes tension and conflict and can be found in numerous phenomena: in fatigue, silence, in social images such as the apolitical, in attitudes like skepticism, and ultimately in the sexual, in the figure of the Androgynous. In this transcribed lecture, which was published last year in France, a new Barthes emerges, whose witty and closely followed flow of thought continues to impress with its thematic breadth.