The root of these shifts in the meaning of big Other is that, in the subject's relation to it, we are effectively dealing with a closed loop best rendered by Escher's famous image of two hands drawing each other. The big Other is a virtual order which exists only through subjects "believing" in it; if, however, a subject were to suspend its belief in the big Other, the subject itself, its "reality," would disappear. The paradox is that symbolic fiction is constitutive of reality: if we take away the fiction, we lose reality itself. This loop is what Hegel called "positing the presuppositions." This big Other should not be reduced to an anonymous symbolic field-there are many interesting cases where an individual stands for the big Other. One should think not primarily of leader-figures who directly embody their communities {king, president, master}, but rather of the more mysterious protectors of appearances-such as otherwise corrupted parents who desperately try to keep their child ignorant of their depraved lives, or, if it is a leader, then one for whom Potemkin villages are built.
( Slavoj Žižek )
[ Less Than Nothing: Hegel and ]
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