Bureaucratic officials derive enjoyment from disavowing personal responsibility

Evidence

Witness two of Žižek’s own examples of the big Other at work: a low-level official who, having not been informed of a promotion, says ‘Sorry, I have not yet been properly informed about this new measure, so I can’t help you…’; a woman who believed that she was suffering bad luck because of the number of her house, who could not be satisfied by simply repainting a different number herself , because ‘it has to be done properly, by the responsible state institution…’ We are all familiar with bureaucratic libido, with the enjoyment that certain officials derive from this position of disavowed responsibility (‘it’s not me, I’m afraid, it’s the regulations’). — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 100

Categorization

• QUESTION: The Žižekian ‘big Other’ concept frames bureaucracy as deferred interpretation; a worthwhile thread to pull on how this relates to the rational-choice reputation models of trust read earlier.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s material on reputation systems and the big Other. Also echoes the Kafka material in Marxist aesthetics about bureaucratic deferral. — connects to: Bureaucratic compartmentalization structurally enables individuals to evade responsibility for harm. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 567; Bureaucracy shifts moral concern from targets onto superiors’ judgment — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 455; Bureaucratic delegation lets officials feel responsibility ends at passing evidence upward. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 501 (+3 more)

Related

• Bureaucratic compartmentalization structurally enables individuals to evade responsibility for harm. (similarity 0.79)
• Bureaucratic delegation lets officials feel responsibility ends at passing evidence upward. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Bureaucratic delegation lets officials feel responsibility ends at passing evidence upward. #corroborates (0.90) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 501
• Bureaucratic compartmentalization structurally enables individuals to evade responsibility for harm. #corroborates (0.86) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 567
• Diffused responsibility makes people act more cruelly than individual accountability #corroborates (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 436
• Bureaucracy’s essence is dissociating means from moral evaluation of ends #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 289
• Bureaucracy shifts moral concern from targets onto superiors’ judgment #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 455
• Subordinates act cruelly when authorities take responsibility for the consequences #qualifies (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 401