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other/Other (autre/Autre) ==def==OTHER (see also LOVE)Zižek's ultimate position is that there is no Other of the Other'. thatis, no final guarantee of the symbolic order: "There is no "big Other"guaranteeing the consistency of the symbolic space within which we dimension of social antagonism, (p. 273). To this extent, tlie subjectcan be thought as a certain excess of ideological interpellation, thatwhich in a way remains "beyond interpellation': 'that which definesthe subject, let us not forget, is precisely the inestion" (p.41). Theexperience of subjectivity is thus an experience of pure negativity. inwhich every aspect of identity must be lost or sacrificed n] "tarryingwith the negative," ... Hegel's whole point is that the subject does notsurvive the ordeal of negativity: he effectively loses his very essence andpasses over into his Other' (p.217) Tl e correlative of the subjectwithin the symbolic order can therefore be thought of as objet a, thatwhich stands in for the Real:) 'the matheme for the subject is S, anempty place in the structure, an elided signifier, while o/7/et a is bydefinition an excessive objet, an object that lacks its place in thestructure" (p. 193) This equivalence must nevertheless be claritied:'The parallel between the void of the transcendental subject (S) andthe void of the transcendental object - the inaccessible X that causesour perceptions is misleading here: the transcendental object is thevoid beyond phenomenal appearances, while the transcendentalsubject alreadr appears as a void' (p.233). ==def==
The 'other' is perhaps the most complex term in Lacan's work. When Lacan first begins to use the term, in the 1930s, it is not very salient, and refers simply to 'other people'. Although Freud does use the term 'other', speaking of both der Andere (the other person) and das Andere (otherness), Lacan seems to have borrowed the term from Hegel, to whose work Lacan was introduced in a series of lectures given by Alexandre KojËve at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in 1933-9 (see KojËve, 1947).
In 1955 Lacan draws a distinction between 'the little other' ('the other') and 'the [[big Other]]' ('the Other') (S2, ch. 19), a distinction which remains central throughout the rest of his work. Thereafter, in Lacanian algebra, the [[big Other]] is designated A (upper case, for French Autre) and the little other is designated a (lower case italicised, for French autre). Lacan asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: the analyst must be 'thoroughly imbued' with the difference between A and a (E, 140), so that he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not of the other (Ec, 454).
