{"id":9448,"date":"2012-10-06T20:53:55","date_gmt":"2012-10-07T01:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9448"},"modified":"2012-10-06T20:54:26","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T01:54:26","slug":"big-other-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/10\/06\/big-other-2\/","title":{"rendered":"big Other minimal difference part of no-part"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek interviewed by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera in London, November-December 2007<\/a><\/p>\n

1. GETTING RID OF THE BIG OTHER.<\/p>\n

When you state that the task is \u2018to get rid of the Big other\u2019 what do you mean?<\/p>\n

SZ: It was already Jacques-Alain Miller who elaborated the idea that democracy involves a kind of destitution of the big Other<\/span>, with direct reference to Claude Lefort: \u201cIs \u2018democracy\u2019 a master-signifier? Without any doubt. It is the master-signifier which says that there is no master-signifier, at least not a master-signifier which would stand alone, that every master-signifier has to insert itself wisely among others.<\/p>\n

Democracy is Lacan\u2019s big S of the barred A, which says: I am the signifier of the fact that Other has a hole, or that it doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Miller is aware that EVERY master-signifier bears witness to the fact that there is no master-signifier, no Other of the Other, that there is a lack in the Other, etc. \u2013 the very gap between S1 and S2 occurs because of this lack (as with God in Spinoza, the Master-Signifier by definition fills in the gap in the series of \u201cordinary\u201d signifiers).<\/p>\n

The difference is that, with democracy, this lack is directly inscribed into the social edifice, it is institutionalized in a set of procedures and regulations<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

no wonder, then, that Miller approvingly quotes Marcel Gauchet about how, in democracy, truth only offers itself \u201cin division and decomposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this, however, all that is to say here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me recall Karl Kautsky\u2019s old defense of the multiparty democracy: Kautsky<\/strong> conceived the victory of socialism as the parliamentary victory of the social-democratic party, and even suggested that the appropriate political form of the passage from capitalism to socialism is the parliamentary coalition of progressive bourgeois parties and socialist parties. (One is tempted to bring this logic to its extreme and suggest that, for Kautsky, the only acceptable revolution would take place after a referendum at which at least 51% of voters would approve it.)<\/p>\n

In his writings of 1917, Lenin saved his utmost acerb irony for those who engage in the endless search for some kind of \u201cguarantee\u201dfor the revolution; this guarantee assumes two main forms:<\/p>\n

1. either the reified notion of social Necessity (one should not risk the revolution too early; one has to wait for the right moment, when the situation is \u201cmature\u201d with regard to the laws of historical development: \u201cit is too early for the Socialist revolution, the working class is not yet mature\u201d) or<\/p>\n

2. the normative (\u201cdemocratic\u201d) legitimacy (\u201cthe majority of the population is not on our side, so the revolution would not really be democratic\u201d) – as Lenin repeatedly puts it, it is as if, before the revolutionary agent risks the seizure of the state power, it should get the permission from some figure of the big Other<\/span> (organize a referendum which will ascertain that the majority supports the revolution). With Lenin, as with Lacan, the point is that a revolution ne s\u2019autorise que d\u2019elle-meme<\/em>: one should assume the revolutionary<\/strong> ACT<\/span> not covered by the big Other<\/span> – the fear of taking power \u201cprematurely,\u201d the search for the guarantee, is the fear of the abyss of the act.<\/span><\/p>\n

Democracy<\/strong> is thus not only the \u201cinstitutionalization of the lack in the Other\u201d. By institutionalizing the lack, it neutralizes \u2013 normalizes \u2013 it<\/span>, so that the inexistence of the big Other<\/span> (Lacan\u2019s il n\u2019y a pas de grand Autre) is again suspended: the big Other<\/span> is again here in the guise of the democratic legitimization\/authorization of our acts \u2013 in a democracy, my acts are \u201ccovered\u201d as the legitimate acts which carry out the will of the majority.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast to this logic, the role of the emancipatory forces is not to passively “reflect” the opinion of the majority, but to create a new majority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Confronted with complex historical situations, our task is not to unite the empirical plurality, but to reduce complexity to its underlying minimal difference<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Our immediate experience of a situation in our reality is that of a multitude of particular elements which coexist \u2013 say, a society is composed of a multitude of strata or groups, and the task of democracy is perceived as that of enabling a livable coexistence of all the elements: all the voices should be heard, their interests and demands taken into account.<\/p>\n

The task of radical emancipatory<\/strong> politics is, on the contrary, that of \u201csubtracting\u201d from this multiplicity the underlying antagonistic tension<\/span> (we see immediately how far we are here from the fashionable criticism of the \u201cbinary logic\u201d: the task is precisely to reduce the multiplicity to its<\/span> \u201cminimal difference<\/span>\u201d).<\/p>\n

That is to say, in the multiplicity of elements, of parts, we should isolate the \u201cpart of no-part<\/span>,\u201d the part of those who, although they are formally included into the \u201cset\u201d of society, do not have a place within it. This element is the symptomal point of universality: although it belongs to its field, it undermines its universal principle.<\/span><\/p>\n

What this means is that in it, specific difference overlaps with universal difference: this part is not only differentiated from other particular elements of society within the encompassing universal unity, it is also in an antagonistic tension with the very predominant universal notion\/principle of society<\/span>.<\/p>\n

It is as if society has to include, count as one of its parts, an element which negates its own defining universality.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emancipatory politics always focuses on such a \u201cpart of no-part<\/span>\u201d: immigrants who are \u201chere but not from here,\u201d those living in slums who are formally citizens, but excluded from the public law and political order, etc.etc. It thus reduces the complexity of the multiple social body to the \u201cminimal difference<\/span>\u201d between the predominant\/ruling universal social principle and those whose very existence undermines this principle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek interviewed by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera in London, November-December 2007 1. GETTING RID OF THE BIG OTHER. When you state that the task is \u2018to get rid of the Big other\u2019 what do you mean? SZ: It was already Jacques-Alain Miller who elaborated the idea that democracy involves a kind of destitution of the big Other, … Continue reading “big Other minimal difference part of no-part”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-9448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zizek","tag-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9448"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9451,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9448\/revisions\/9451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}