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.” 92
When, in David Lean’s Brief Encounter, the lovers meet for the last time at the desolate train station, their solitude is immediately disturbed by Celia Johnson’s noisy and inquisitive friend who, unaware of the underlying tension between the couple, goes prattling on about ridiculously insignificant everyday incidents. Unable to communicate directly, the couple can only stare desperately.
This common prattler is the big Other at its purest: while it appears as an accidental and unfortunate intrusion, its role is structurally necessary. When, towards the end of the film, we see this scene a second time, accompanied by Celia Johnson’s voice over, she tells us that she was not listening to what her friend was saying, indeed she had not understood a word; however, precisely as such , her prattling provided the necessary support, as a kind of safety-cushion, for the lover s’ last meeting, preventing its self-destructive explosion or, worse, its decline into banality. That is to say, on the one hand, the very presence of the naive prattler who “understands nothing” of the situation enables the lovers to maintain a minimum of control over their predicament, since they feel compelled to “maintain proper appearances” in front of this gaze. On the other hand, in the few words privately exchanged before the big Other’s interruption, they had come to the brink of confronting the unpleasant question: if they’re really so passionately in love that they can’t live without each other, why don’t they simply divorce their spouses and get together? The prattler then arrives at exactly the right moment, enabling the lovers to maintain the tragic grandeur of their predicament. Without the intrusion, they would have had to confront the banality and vulgar compromise of their situation. The shift to be made in a proper dialectical analysis thus goes from the condition of impossibility to the condition of possibility: what appears as the “condition of impossibility;’ or the obstacle, is in fact the condition that enables what it appears to threaten to exist. 93
Is God then the big Other? The answer is not as simple as it may appear. One can say that he is the big Other at the level of the enunciated, but not at the level of the enunciation (the level which really matters). Saint Augustine was already fully aware of this problem, when he asked the naive but crucial question: if God sees into the innermost depths of our hearts, knowing what we really think and want better than we do ourselves, why then is a confession to God necessary? Are we not telling him what he already knows? Is God then not like the tax authorities in some countries who already know all about our income, yet still ask us to report it, just so they can compare the two lists and establish who is lying? The answer, of course, lies in the position of enunciation. In a group of people, even if everyone knows my dirty secret (and even if everyone knows that everyone else knows it) , it is still crucial for me to say it openly, the moment I do, everything changes. But what is this “everything”? The moment I say it, the big Other, the instance of appearance, knows it; my secret is thereby inscribed into the big Other. Here we encounter the two opposite aspects of the big Other: the big Other as the “subject supposed to know,” as the Master who sees everything and secretly pulls the strings, and the big Other as the agent of pure appearance, the agent supposed to not know, the agent for whose benefit appearances are to be maintained.
Prior to my confession, God in the first aspect of the big Other already knows everything [Level of ENUNCIATION], but God in the second aspect [Level of ENUNCIATED] does not. This difference can also be expressed in terms of subjective assmnption: insofar as I merely know it, I do not really assume it subjectively, in other words, I can continne to act as if I do not know it; only when I confess to it in public can I no longer pretend not to know.
The theological problem is the following: does not this distinction between the two Gods introduce finitude into God himself? Should not God as the absolute Subject be precisely the one for whom the enunciated and its enunciation totally overlap, so that whatever we intimately know has already been confessed to him? The problem is that such a God is the God of a psychotic, the God to whom I am totally transparent also at the level of enunciation. 95
of course there is no Spirit as a substantial entity above and beyond individuals, but this does not make Hegel a nominalist there is “something more” than the reality of individuals, and this “more” is the virtual Real which always supplements reality, “more than
nothing, but less than something.”