Sons of bitches!

And if I have forgotten to insult someone, I apologize. (Johannes Brahms, 1833 - 1897) Juliane Liebert is an author and journalist with a particular fondness for pop culture. In the best tradition of Clara Drechsler or Frieda Grafe, her texts always spark original, clever, and surprising insights. Liebert's essay "Sons of Whores! - On the Beauty and Necessity of Insulting" is a tribute to coarse anger, an apotheosis of clever and creative cursing - a cursing that is both liberating and (almost) always aware of its own ridiculousness, pitifulness, and helplessness. Juliane Liebert's engagement with poems, songs, and texts by François Villon, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Georg Kreisler, the Saporoger Cossacks, Sean Bonney, or Ton Steine Scherben is not only analytical but also sympathetic. When the corset of linguistic decorum is torn apart by unbounded emotionality, it simultaneously expresses anarchic strength and protest against linguistic norms and social control. The Blow-Up images by Erman Aksoy - a seething ear, an enraged gaze, a bleached tongue - serve as a visual counterpart. They capture moments of distorted facial expressions and gestures, moments of anger, disgust, and confrontation. Photographic retinal attacks as an artistic reflection on the nature of cursing and rage. "Perhaps we should establish beautiful cursing as a language of love," suggests Juliane Liebert. "Cursing is the bowel movement of the soul," says popular wisdom. So praise, exalt, or scorn this book. Otherwise, you will roast forever in the courtyard of hell, in a stinking toilet bucket, or as refuse in the gutter of the most miserable street in this world!.