On the 'non-existence of the Big Other' & Kafka: The remarks of RMUtt rescued from the comments box:
I believe Kafka should be read in a somewhat different way; "The endless deferrals of the bureaucratic world, the inability to localise responsibility, the fact that we encounter only and everywhere ‘representatives’" are the way to uphold the illusion that there is a Big Other - and thus the way to maintain the Big Other. This is, I think, especially clear in the fragments that are related to his planned novel about The Great Wall of China.
"The Emperor, so a parable runs, has sent a message to you, the humble subject, the insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun; the Emperor from his deathbed has sent a message to you alone. He has commanded the messenger to kneel down by the bed, and has whispered the message to him; so much store did he lay on it that he ordered the messenger to whisper it back into his ear again. Then by a nod of the head he has confirmed that it is right. Yes, before the assembled spectators of his death--all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and on the spacious and loftily mounting open staircases stand in a ring the great princes of the Empire--before all these he has delivered his message. The messenger immediately sets out on his journey; a powerful, an indefatigable man; now pushing with his right arm, now with his left, he cleaves a way for himself through the throng; if he encounters resistance he points to his breast, where the symbol of the sun glitters; the way is made easier for him than it would be for any other man. But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have no end. If he could reach the open fields how fast he would fly, and soon doubtless you would hear the welcoming hammering of his fists on your door. But instead how vainly does he wear out his strength; still he is only making his way through the chambers of the innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; he must next fight his way down the stair; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; the courts would still have to be crossed; and after the courts the second outer palace; and once more stairs and courts; and once more another palace; and so on for thousands of years; and if at last he should burst through the outermost gate--but never, never can that happen--the imperial capital would lie before him, the center of the world, crammed to bursting with its own sediment. Nobody could fight his way through here even with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself."
Now, I think that Mutt and I may be somehow talking about two sides of the same coin. The Big Other has the quality of being 'everywhere and nowhere' and the oscillation between these, the perpetual ambivalence, is the secret of its success. Kind of like the gaze of the panoptican - you sense it constantly, but turn round and its vanished, its somewhere else.
The logic is something like this: That which is everywhere is nowhere in particular; conversely, that which can be found nowhere in particular acquires the appearance of omnipresence – that it cannot be local-ised attests to its magnitude rather than its non-existence. Each time the inquirer bemoans ‘that’s not it’, ‘it’s not here’, anxiety mounts, and this cumulative anxiety is misrecognised as the shadow of its object.
This last implies that the illusion is generated precisely by the fact of there being an inquirer (after the Big Other); or rather the Big Other is a spectre (forever 'just round the corner) thrown up by the very process of inquiring into it.
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