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=Racism=
==fantasy==
Another way of looking at the relationship between fantasy and the big Other which Žižek often alludes to is to think of fantasy as concealing the inconsistency of the Symbolic Order. In order to understand this we need to know why the big Other is inconsistent, or structured around a gap. The answer to this question, according to Žižek, is that when the body enters the field of signification or the big Other, it is castrated. What Žižek means by this is that the price we pay for our admission to the universal medium of language is the loss of our full bodily selves. When we submit to the big Other we sacrifice direct access to our bodies and, instead, are condemned to an indirect relation with it via the medium of language, So, whereas before we enter language we are what Žižek terms 'pathological' subjects (the subject he notates by the figure 'S'), after we are immersed in language we are what he refers to as 'barred' subjects (the empty subject he notates with the figure '$'). What is barred from the barred subject is precisely the body as the materialization, or incarnation, of enjoyment. Material enjoyment is strictly at odds with, or heterogeneous to, the immaterial order of the signifier.
In order for the subject to enter the Symbolic Order, then, the Real of enjoyment or jouissance has to be evacuated from it. Which is another way of saying that, as we saw in the previous chapter, the advent of the symbol entails 'the murder of the thing'. Although not all enjoyment is completely evacuated by the process of signification (some of it persists in what we call erogenous zones), most of it is not Symbolized. What this means is that the Symbolic Order cannot fully account for enjoyment-it is what is missing from the big Other. The big Other is therefore inconsistent or structured around a lack, the lack of enjoyment. It is, we might say, castrated or rendered incomplete by admitting the subject, in much the same way as the subject is castrated by its admission.
What fantasy does is conceal this lack or incompletion. So, for example, as we saw in the previous chapter, 'there is no sexual relationship' in the big Other. What the fantasy of a sexual scenario thereby conceals is the impossibility of this sexual relationship. It covers up the lack in the big Other, the missing jouissance. In this regard, Žižek often avers that fantasy is a way for subjects to organize their jouissance-it is a way to manage or domesticate the traumatic loss of the enjoyment which cannot be Symbolized.
[[image:structuroffantasy.jpg]]
Figure 6.1 The structure of fantasy
As we can see in this diagram, the subject is faced with the abyss of the desire of the Other: what does the Other want from me? In order to 'satisfy' this desire and conceal the abyss, the subject responds with a fantasy. The fantasy therefore realizes the desire of the Other. I am not sure what the Other wants, but they seem to like me eating strawberry cake so I will therefore eat strawberry cake in order to try to satisfy their desire. In terms of racism, the intersubjective element of fantasy means that, paradoxically, the racist stages the desire of his victim. The racist, confronted with the abyss of the Jew's desire, makes sense of it by constructing a fantasy in which the Jew is at the centre of some nefarious plot, such as to take over the world. In this way, the desire of the racist to rid the country of Jews is actually a means of concealing the anxiety generated by the desire of the Jews.
==Che vuoi?==
For Žižek, racism begins with the question of 'Che vuoi?'. As we saw in Chapter 5, 'Che vuoi?' is a shorthand way of asking 'What do you want from me?'. This question arises from the arbitrary character of our roles in the Symbolic Order. These roles are arbitrary in that they are not the direct consequence of our actual, real properties. For example, if I am a king there is nothing inherently 'kingly' about me; I do not have an intrinsic quality of 'kingliness' that I am born with. The qualities of 'kingliness' are conferred upon me by my position in the Symbolic Order when I am born into a royal family. We therefore maintain a distance towards our roles because we do not feel we can fully account for them. This distance is expressed by the 'Che vuoi?'-'ZWhy am I what you say I am?-the question we address to the big Other. It is a question asked these days less by kings and more by celebrities: do you (the fans) love me for my fame (my role in the Symbolic Order) or for who I really am?
