When “talking to brick walls” before Seminar 19 (…or worse) Lacan says:

The psychoanalyst doesn’t seem to have changed anything with regard to a particular seat of knowledge. There’s nothing irregular about this. Changing the seat of knowledge is not the kind of thing that just happens overnight. The future belongs to God, as they say, that is, to good luck, the good luck of those who had the bright idea of following me. Something will come of them, so long as /they don’t fall prey to the little pigs/. This is what I call good luck (bonne chance). For the rest, good luck is out of the question. Their doings will be settled by automatism, which is the exact opposite of luck, good or hard.

I corrected the English translation because “the little pigs” in the French idiom were turned into “the bogeyman”:

si les petits cochons ne les mangent pas
so long as the bogeyman doesn’t get them

Although the people of France might indeed be referring to a bogeyman by this idiom, when it is Lacan who utters the signifier “little pigs”, we cannot neglect it. Recall the story of three little pigs: The party who is made into the bogeyman in that story is not the little pigs, but the wolf who destroys their houses (“…or worse”).

Here is the fairy tale: The first little pig makes his house out of straw, the second one makes it out of wood, the third one makes it out of bricks. The wolf “huffs and puffs” and the first two houses collapse on their owners, but he is unable to demolish the third house. After struggling to enter the brick house from the door, he jumps down the chimney into a boiling kettle, “falling prey to the little pig.”

It’s obvious that the “brick walls” that Lacan is “speaking to”, the “seat of knowledge” with regard to which psychoanalysis “doesn’t seem to have changed anything”, corresponds to the brick house made by the third little pig. But what does this seat of knowledge made out of bricks defend against: ignorance or truth? If you continue reading the text, Lacan tells that the distinction knowledge/truth manifests as the distinction knowledge/ignorance.

The seat of knowledge is the refuge of the little pig, whereas ignorance is the wolf who comes to shatter that seat to the ground. The wolf, being unknown, is made into the bogeyman in the eyes of the little pig, according to the frame of the fairy tale. But Lacan doesn’t say “so long as the wolf doesn’t shatter your house, so long as the bogeyman doesn’t get you”, instead he says “so long as the little pig doesn’t swallow you, so long as you don’t fall prey to the little pigs”.

The essential danger comes not from the ones who are made into the bogeyman, but from the little pigs who look around with a frame of knowledge where they have taken refuge, and thereby see bogeymen all around them. The little pigs who have taken refuge in knowledge (houses made of straw or wood or bricks) are unable to access certain truths and acknowledge certain values, which instead they turn into bogeymen: “There’s nothing irregular about this.” They revile the ignorance that limits their refuge in knowledge and close their door to the truth.

This immediately recalls the words of Jesus:

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. (Matthew 7:1-6)

But you don’t need to get swallowed by the pigs (who prepare the “boiling kettle under the chimney” or “turn and tear you to pieces”) in order to “fall prey” to them; when they make you into a bogeyman they are already preying on you by means of ideology.

These little pigs who are frightened by the “evil wolf”, these local critics who make bogeymen out of scary truths are pretty common among Lacanians themselves (as the English translation exemplifies).

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner