PR and propaganda succeed because the collective fiction is allowed to stay ignorant

Evidence

One important dimension of the big Other is that it does not know everything. It is this constitutive ignorance of the big Other that allows public relations to function. Indeed, the big Other could be defined as the consumer of PR and propaganda, the virtual figure which is required to believe even when no individual can. To use one of Žižek’s examples: who was it, for instance, who didn’t know that Really Existing Socialism (RES) was shabby and corrupt? Not any of the people, who were all too aware of its shortcomings; nor any of the government administrators, who couldn’t but know. No, it was the big Other who was the one deemed not to know – who wasn’t allowed to know – the quotidian reality of RES. Yet the distinction between what the big Other knows, i.e. what is officially accepted, and what is widely known and experienced by actual individuals, is very far from being ‘merely’ emptily formal; it is the discrepancy between the two that allows ‘ordinary’ social reality to function. When the illusion that the big Other did not know can no longer be maintained, the incorporeal fabric holding the social system together disintegrates. This is why Khrushchev’s speech in 1965, in which he ‘admitted’ the failings of the Soviet state, was so momentous. It is not as if anyone in the party was unaware of the atrocities and corruption carried out in its name, but Khrushchev’s announcement made it impossible to believe any more that the big Other was ignorant of them. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 95

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clear, useful definition of Lacan/Žižek’s ‘big Other’ as the collective fiction that must not know, with the constitutive-ignorance mechanism lucidly unpacked.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that social reality only functions on the maintained discrepancy between what the big Other knows and what everyone actually knows — and that announcing the truth collapses the incorporeal fabric — is among the densest, most reusable ideas in contemporary critical theory.
• XREF: Directly echoes the reader’s prior engagement with Fisher, Žižek, ideology, and repression — and connects to 1984-style doublethink (We by Zamyatin in the reader library). — connects to: Modern propaganda works despite disbelief because it justifies itself in action — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 417; Manageable public cynicism about media protects the status quo — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1570

Related

• The pretense the big Other remains ignorant sustains ordinary social reality (similarity 0.89)
• Social systems require a fictional authority believed to be ignorant (similarity 0.83)
• Official pretense and private knowledge must diverge for social reality to function (similarity 0.83)
• Manageable public cynicism about media protects the status quo (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modern propaganda works despite disbelief because it justifies itself in action #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 417
• Manageable public cynicism about media protects the status quo #expands (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1570