Balkan identity cascade: everyone claims not to be Balkan
anecdote · Slovenian/Yugoslav ·
retold in 3 talks
Žižek narrates a chain in which every nation in Europe identifies the 'Balkan' as beginning with their neighbor to the east: Slovenes say Croatia is Balkan, Croats say Serbia is, Serbs say Albania is, until the British conclude that all of Europe is a 'big Balkan' with Brussels as the new Constantinople.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“this is the slovene nationalism. we are mittteleuropa. croatia balkan begins.”
“The big problem... socialism was disintegrating, the ruling... bureaucracy... knew its approaching its end. And the problem was how to reinvent itself to survive the fall of socialism. The answer was nationalism”Slavoj Zizek - Israel, Palestine & the Future2023-11-19 · 1:32:00
“each nation was identified with a certain racist cliche feature... Slovenes were supposed to be misers... Bosnians are supposed to be sex obsessed... Macedonians are supposed to be thieves... Montenegro people are supposed to be extremely lazy.”
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
Tony Benn1François Hollande1Benjamin Walter1Stella Assange1Haniyeh Eyvani1Russell Brand1Peter Sellers1Norman Vincent Peale1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Žižek narrates a chain in which every nation in Europe identifies the 'Balkan' as beginning with their neighbor to the east: Slovenes say Croatia is Balkan, Croats say Serbia is, Serbs say Albania is, until the British conclude that all of Europe is a 'big Balkan' with Brussels as the new Constantinople., illustrating European fragmentation,nationalism and identity
Slavoj Zizek - Israel, Palestine & the Future2023-11-19 · 1:32:00
Žižek rejects the 'Balkan is complex' myth, arguing nationalism was a simple survival tactic for the disintegrating socialist nomenclature., illustrating nomenclature reinventing itself as nationalism
Žižek lists pre-war Yugoslav stereotypes: Slovenes as misers, Bosnians as sex-obsessed, Macedonians as thieves, Montenegrins as lazy. He argues these racist jokes functioned as a 'tool of solidarity' that disappeared when real nationalism erupted., illustrating race-antisemitism,everyday-life