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==def==
One way at looking at the relationshipbetween fantasy and the big Other is to think of fantasy as concealing the inconssistency of the Symbolic Order. To understand this we need to know why the big Other is inconsistent or structured around a gap. The answer to this question is that when the body enters the field of signification or the big Other, it is castrated. What Zizek means by this is that the price we pay for our admission to the univerdal medium of language is the loss of our full body selves. When we submit to the big Other we sacrifice direct access to our bodies and, instead, are condenmned to an indirect relation with it via the medium of language. So, whereas, before we enter language we are what Zizek terms "pathological" subjects (the subject he notates by S), after we are immersed in language we are what he refers to as "barred" subjects (the empty subject he notates with $). What is barred from the barred subject is precisely the body as the materialization or incarnation of enjoyment (jouissance). Material jouissance is strictly at odds with, or heterogenous to, the immaterial order of the signifier.
For the subject to enter the Symbolic Order, then, the Real of jouissance or enjoyment has to be evacuated from it. Which is another way to saying that the advent of the symbol entails "the murder of the thing". Although not all jouissance is completely evacuated by the process of signification (some of it persists in what are called the erogenous zones), most of it is not Symbolized. And this entails that the Symbolic Order cannot fully account for jouissance - it is what us missing in the big Other. The big Other is therefore inconsistent or structured around a lack, the lack of jouissance. It is, we might say, castrated or rendered icomplete 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, as we saw previoulsly when alluding to the formulas of sexuation, "there is not 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, Zizek 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 jouissance which cannot be Symbolized.
==deff==
For Zizek, racism is produced by a clash of fantasies rather than by a clash of symbols vying for supremacy. There are several distinguishing features of fantasy:
1. Fantasies are produced as a defence against the desire of the Other manifest in "What do you want from me?" - which is what the Other, in its incosnsistency, really wants from me.
2. Fantasies provide a framework through which we see reality. They are anamorphic in that they presuppose a point of view, denying us an objective account of the world.
3. Fantasise are the one unique thing about us. They are what make us individuals, allowing a subjective view of reality. As such, our fantasies are extremely sensitive to the intrusion of others.
4. Fantasies are the way in which we organize and domesticate our jouissance.
==def==
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