Reality and fantasy in New Orleans
By Slavoj Zizek
According to a well-known anecdote, anthropologists studying "primitives" who supposedly held certain superstitious beliefs (that they descend from a fish or from a bird, for example) asked them directly whether they "really" believed such things. They answered: "Of course not - we're not stupid! But I was told that some of our ancestors actually did believe that." In short, they transferred their belief onto another.
We do the same thing with our children by going through the ritual of Santa Claus. Since our children (are supposed to) believe in him and we do not want to disappoint them, they pretend to believe so as not to disappoint us by puncturing our belief in their naivety (and to get the presents, of course). Isn't this also the usual excuse of the mythical crooked politician who turns honest? "I cannot disappoint the ordinary people who believe in me." Furthermore, this need to find another who "really believes" is also what propels us to stigmatize the Other as a (religious or ethnic) "fundamentalist." In an uncanny way, some beliefs always seem to function "at a distance." In order for the belief to function, there has to be some ultimate guarantor of it, and yet this guarantor is always deferred, displaced, never present in persona. The point, of course, is that this other subject who directly believes does not need to actually exist for the belief to be operative: It is enough precisely to presuppose his existence, i.e. to believe in it, either in the guise of the primitive Other or in the guise of the impersonal "one" ("one believes...")
