"Whenever two or more of you are gathered in my name..."

What does one do about, how does one deal with - live with - the big Other? Is it even so simple as to say the big Other? Pace Deleuze, the question should be asked: one or many Other(s)?

K-punk inquires: "Is there a difference between the big Other and the ego-ideal?" This formulation puts the finger on the problem. On the one hand, the big Other stands as a figure corresponding to the totality of social relations. On the other hand, it stands as such as a figure - a fact which means that it cannot in actuality ever really embrace this totality.

Rather, the big Other as a symbol exists on a faultline - not just in speech, but also in terms of existence more generally - the big Other is always either saying too much, or else too little. It is always either calling me - ordering me - to do something highly specific, or else is simply standing anxiously opaque.

This is what Milan Kundera was referring to when, in his novel of the same name, he formulated the idea of "the unbearable lightness of being." It is also what Zizek was talking about on Thursday when he introduced into the formulation of the big Other as a legal order the split between on the one hand, the letter of the law, and on the other, the meta-rules. As Zizek understands it, it is this second set of indefinite, vague, and basically flexible understandings and habits that characterizes our relation to the law itself - that indeed, allows us to have a relation with the law at all.

The slide occurs when these meta-rules become mistaken for the law itself. When this happens, habits harden, and we lock ourselves into a state of unfreedom - what Deleuze characterized as monotonous repetitions of the same.

For Lacan, this step is equivalent to the step out of a law - in effect, the movement here is the replacement of the Name-of-the-Father (the rightful supersubjective gurantor of the symbolic order) with the Father-of-Enjoyment (the obscene phantasmatic gurantor of my own, subjectively particular, pathological tics and quirks) and as consequence results in perversion, and indeed, the loss of enjoyment - since one cannot really enjoy anything in particular, when one is being infinitely coerced to enjoy everything in general. As Brecht put it: "To live in a country without a sense of humour is unbearable, but it is even more unbearable in a country where you need a sense of humour."

From this, the following becomes clear: there are really two images of the big Other. First, the big Other of the Name-of-the-Father, which corresponds to the letter of the law. Second, the big Other of the Father-of-Enjoyment, which corresponds to the meta-rules which underpin, and in a certain sense, allow for the realization of the letter of law.

Both of these images are equally "true" and each one necessarily implies the other. As such, the problem is not: "Which one should be discarded?" but instead, "How can we maintain a line of ambivilance between them?" or, "How can we position themselves between them?"

The major point here is that we are at once always dealing with a static, pre-existing big Other that seems to stand above us (e.g. the Law) and creating for ourselves our own personal big Others (e.g. the meta-rules) that effectively works to subvert this first figure of Other whether we want it to or not.

On what basis, with reference to what criteria, can we establish a fragile connection between these figures, can we take control of the process by which they are establishing connections between themselves? In a certain sense, the "theological" turn in the work of Zizek and Badiou has revolved around this question - which is at root the question of critical praxis, pure and simple.

Schematically, and for the time being, it is possible to say this: crucify the Other.