Albanian soldier 'fuck your mother' friendship ritual
anecdote · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 3 talks
In the Yugoslav army, Žižek and an Albanian intellectual soldier became true friends only when the soldier said 'I fuck your mother,' which Žižek reciprocated; thereafter they greeted each other only with 'Mother' / 'Sister', a shorthand reminder of genuine friendship enacted through mutual obscenity.
As told 2
“Every morning that we met instead of saying 'Hello, good morning,' we just…he told me 'Mother,' I told him 'Sister.' You know? It was just a reminder we are still friends.”
“he told me 'mother,' I said 'sister.' Without any laughter, it was a basic solidarity.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Massimo Cacciari1Sergei Parajanov1Tavis Smiley1Marina Abramović1Rainer Maria Rilke1Wilhelm Furtwängler1Bashar al-Assad1Inessa Armand1
alongside works
Every retelling 2
In the Yugoslav army, Žižek and an Albanian intellectual soldier became true friends only when the soldier said 'I fuck your mother,' which Žižek reciprocated; thereafter they greeted each other only with 'Mother' / 'Sister', a shorthand reminder of genuine friendship enacted through mutual obscenity., illustrating emancipatory obscenity,ethnic solidarity,brotherhoods and unity
Žižek's Albanian army colleague greeted him one morning with 'I screw your mother' as a bid for real friendship; Žižek immediately replied 'after I finish with your sister,' they embraced, and thereafter exchanged only the words 'mother'/'sister' each morning as a sign of solidarity., illustrating obscenity as authentic social bond,left-wing racism as solidarity,meta-rules of social interaction