"Joint Presentation"

In his analysis of Sarrasine, Barthes points out various instances where the symbolic code applies to the short story. Of course, many of these antitheses do coalesce together, in a sense (youthful Marianina can touch the decrepit old man, meanwhile La Zambinella destroys the male/female dichotomy). But Barthes also notes in Sarrasine moments where a boundary between two parts of a binary opposition is not actually broken down, but is instead straddled. For example, Barthes calls to attention the mention of a window recess in the story: "recess, an intermediate place between garden and salon, death and life." (21)

How do these possibilities-- option A, or option B, or neither option, or maybe even both-- work in regards to who or what occupies them? Barthes mentions that the "joint presentation" can be used rhetorically to "introduce and summarize the antithesis" (21), but can that middle ground, that neutral space, be occupied as if it were a clearly defined pole or even perhaps the space which is left when the dichotomy breaks down?