Karadzic's permissive poem
example · Yugoslav/Balkan context ·
retold in 8 talks
Žižek quotes a poem by Radovan Karadžić calling the crowd to carnival transgression ('nothing is forbidden in my faith') to illustrate how ethnic fundamentalism operates as obscene permissiveness rather than repression.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 7
“Nothing is forbidden in my faith. There is loving and drinking and looking at the sun for as long as you want. And this godhead forbids you nothing.”
“"People, nothing is forbidden in my faith. There is loving and drinking and looking at the sun for as long as you want."”
“I offer you inclemency and wine... nothing is forbidden in my faith. There is loving and drinking and looking at the sun for as long as you want”
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
Aleksandar Tijanić3Emir Kusturica4Hassan Ngeze2Radovan Karadžić7Wilhelm Reich3Mikhail Bakhtin4Slobodan Milošević5John Carpenter4
alongside works
Every retelling 7
Žižek quotes a poem by Radovan Karadžić calling the crowd to carnival transgression ('nothing is forbidden in my faith') to illustrate how ethnic fundamentalism operates as obscene permissiveness rather than repression., illustrating false carnivalesque liberation,fundamentalism as transgression
Žižek quotes Karadžić's untitled poem, 'nothing is forbidden in my faith, there is loving and drinking', to show how the suspension of moral prohibition is the hidden structure of postmodern nationalism, enacting the obscene superego's 'you may.', illustrating obscene superego / permissive superego,surplus enjoyment,libidinal bribery
Žižek quotes Radovan Karadžić's poem to demonstrate how ethnic-nationalist ideology operates as false permissivity: beneath the call to convert to a new faith is the promise that everything, loving, drinking, sunbathing, is permitted., illustrating false permissivity,fundamentalism as obscene license
The stories we tell about ourselves are fundamentally lies by which we conceal what we actually do, Radovan Karadžić's poetry was the narrative Bosnian Serb nationalists told themselves to justify ethnic cleansing; the enemy is only an enemy because we refused to hear their story is 'total nonsense'., illustrating ideology,the big Other,master signifier (le signifiant maître)
Žižek reads Karadžić's poem ('Nothing is forbidden in my faith, there is loving and drinking and looking at the sun') as a candid statement of how nationalist/religious fundamentalism functions: not as a demand for sacrifice but as an invitation to lawless pleasure under a higher banner., illustrating fundamentalism as covert permissivity,nationalism and enjoyment
Žižek reads aloud Karadzic's poem offering 'nothing is forbidden in my faith, there is laughing and drinking and looking at the sun for as long as you want', arguing it exemplifies the obscene libidinal promise of ethnic nationalism: join us and all prohibitions are lifted., illustrating obscene supplement,fundamentalism and transgressive freedom,fascism-populism