(Scene: A dimly lit, overly pretentious café on the corner of an impossibly chic Parisian street. The tables are small, the chairs are too uncomfortable for prolonged sitting, and the air is thick with the scent of Gitanes and overpriced espresso. Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes are sitting at a table adorned with nothing but a single, wilting rose in a glass vase. All three are wearing black berets, tiny round glasses, and exude an air of profound intellectual superiority. They stare at the table with intense concentration, as if it holds the secrets of the universe.)
Foucault: (tapping his Gitanes cigarette on the ashtray, his voice thick with superiority) You know, my dear friends, this café—this abomination of bourgeois decadence—is, of course, a perfect microcosm of society. We are, in essence, all prisoners of this café. (pauses, takes a dramatic drag) The espresso we drink, the croissant we nibble upon, are but instruments of our own submission. We are, at best, docile bodies, consuming the very structures that oppress us.
Derrida: (smiling cryptically, swirling his espresso in slow motion) Ah, but Foucault, do you not see? To speak of oppression is to reaffirm the power structures that we claim to dismantle. (pauses for effect, looks deeply into his coffee as if seeking profound truths) The real oppression is the signifier of oppression itself. This espresso? It is an interruption—a trace—of meaning, slipping through the cracks of our perceptual existence, forever haunting us, never fully present.
Barthes: (smirking as he lights another Gitanes, his beret tilted at a perfect angle) Ah, but you both miss the point entirely. You are discussing power and oppression when you should be focusing on the mythology of this café. (gestures expansively with a cigarette, ignoring the smoke billowing around him) This café is a myth—and we are its narrative. The barista—a mere figure in the text, wearing the uniform of capitalist servitude, feeding us with symbols of consumption, a pastiche of bourgeois luxury. The croissant—it is the very metaphor of our existential ennui, a signifier for the alienation of the modern subject.
Foucault: (nodding as though Barthes has just unlocked the deepest secret of the universe, but still pretending to be superior) Yes, yes, the myth of the croissant. (pauses, looks at Barthes with profound seriousness) But let’s not forget that the very act of consuming—engaging with this myth—is an act of complicity. We are complicit in the performance of subjugation, a ritual of power that holds us in its grasp. (takes another slow drag from his cigarette, glaring at an innocent bystander walking by) Just look at them—docile… so unaware of their own oppression.
Derrida: (raising an eyebrow, carefully placing his tiny glass of espresso on the table) Ah, but Foucault, isn’t that exactly the point? They are unaware. And perhaps that’s all that matters. The gaze—our gaze—defines them as subjects in this textual world we’ve constructed. (turns toward Barthes) But you, Barthes, you speak of mythology, when I ask you this: what if the myth is itself a trace, always pointing beyond itself, leading us to a place that doesn’t exist, yet endlessly pulling us in?
Barthes: (smiling knowingly, sipping his espresso like a master of all things) Exactly, Derrida. The myth is a signifier that loops around us, ensnaring our very souls in the dialectic of consumption. The croissant, the espresso, they are all images of the self, constantly being reproduced in our minds. We are nothing more than copies of the copies we create in our minds—our lives, an endless repetition of signs that never truly exist, always just outside of us.
Foucault: (snapping his fingers in realisation) Ah! Yes, yes! This is it! (pauses for dramatic effect) We are not merely prisoners of power—we are prisoners of the signifier! We are shackled not by society, but by the very language we use to describe it! Every sentence, every word—(gestures wildly, knocking over his espresso) is a form of surveillance! We are forever being watched by the gaze of our own constructed realities!
Derrida: (leaning back, swirling his coffee, eyes half-lidded with unutterable wisdom) Foucault, Foucault, you fail to grasp the true horror. The real surveillance is not external—it is internal. (pauses dramatically) We are all the panopticon. The mirror is the true instrument of power. We are gazing at ourselves, seeing ourselves being gazed at, but never truly knowing who we are.
Barthes: (nodding solemnly, his cigarette poised in the air like a weapon) Ah, but you are all forgetting one crucial thing. You, my dear Foucault, you Derrida, we—we are the authors of this entire charade! We are the creators of the gaze, the myths, the signifiers. The text cannot exist without us! The café cannot exist without our ability to name it, to render it into being! Without our intellectual superiority, none of this—(gestures to the café, the ashtray, the passing waiter)—none of it would have any meaning!
Foucault: (leaning forward, his face flushed with excitement) You are correct, Barthes. But it is our very intellect that enslaves us. We are caught in an infinite loop of conceptual tyranny, as helpless as the waiter who brings us coffee, trapped in his role in the system of signs.
Derrida: (laughing softly, as though at a private joke) Helpless? Ah, but what is helplessness but another concept? A signifier that deceives us into thinking we are less than we are. (takes a slow, deliberate drag from his Gitanes) But let us not dwell on the absurdity of our existence any longer. For we, my dear friends, are the ultimate signifiers of absurdity.
Barthes: (raising his glass, almost toasting) And with that, we are—finally—the most enlightened of all.
(The three sit in silence, staring intensely at the ashtray as if awaiting some divine epiphany, while the waiter silently watches them, unsure whether to intervene.)
