Zizek explains that the big Other operates on a symbolic level. He expounds on what this symbolic order is composed of: we when speak or listen (communicate) we don't think about the rules of grammar or syntax. If I were to bear these rules in mind at all times my speech would essentially break down. So, we never merely interact with others. Our speech activity is grounded on our accepting and relying on a complex network of rules and other kinds presuppositions. In the background of an act of communication is the active participation in the same so-called “life-world” that enables me and my partner in conversation to understand each other. Now Zizek is ready call this symbolic level on which the big Other operates “symbolic space,” and this symbolic space acts like a yardstick against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or “reified” in a single agent, e.g. God, or, a Cause. The following is an excerpt:
THE PROMOTION AND THE NOTION OF A FREE CHOICE
The most elementary level of symbolic exchange is a so-called “empty gesture,” an offer made or meant to be rejected. Brecht gave a poignant expression to this feature in his play Jasager. in which the young boy is asked to accord freely with what will in any case be his fate (to be thrown into the valley); as his teacher explains it to him, it is customary to ask the victim if he agrees with his fate, but it is also customary for the victim to say yes. Belonging to a society involves a paradoxical point at which each of us is ordered to embrace freely, as the result of our choice, what is anyway imposed on us (we all must love our country or our parents). This paradox of willing (choosing freely) what is in any case necessary, of pretending (maintaining the appearance) that there is a free choice although effectively there isn’t one, is strictly codependent with the notion of an empty symbolic gesture, a gesture – an offer – which is meant to be rejected.
Something similar is part of our everyday mores. When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to retract, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer – this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected. The magic of symbolic exchange is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, there is a distinct gain for both parties in their pact of solidarity. Of course, the problem is: what if the person to whom the offer to be rejected is made actually accepts it? What if, upon being beaten in the competition, I accept my friend’s offer to get the promotion instead of him? A situation like this is properly catastrophic: it causes the disintegration of the semblance (of freedom) that pertains to social order, which equals the disintegration of the social substance itself, the dissolution of the social link.
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