Call for Papers on Fools and Foolery for the November 2026 issue of IPA
The idea of this call is to explore the temporal dynamics of Fools and Foolery, its rhetoric and grammar, its meaning and substance, its goal and target, and how to read current history beyond the eyes of fools. The intention is to link anthropology with social-theoretical and political perspectives.
We are calling for papers with a maximum length of 9000 words, formatted according to the IPA guidelines. Every submission will be peer reviewed.
We invite submissions which analyse how and why the fool appeared as a major actor in history, how this is related to the history of the occult, and how both managed to exert a fundamental effect on the rise and then the functioning of the modern world. The idea is to study the connections between contemporary political society and the so-called secular magical tradition, and the techniques of the real-world operation of the fools. Papers should explore some basic questions about the methods the fools use, their essence and the scope of their activity, in the context of modernity. This is oriented to understanding themes like totalitarianism, contemporary hyper-modernity, the links between modern thinking and obscure and distant historical processes, and the extent to which past or contemporary political leaders exert influence by demonstrating foolish patterns.
The fool may be characterised as the empty vessel of the void, who owns nothing, as he is a non-entity; one without properties, without valuable attributes, rightful characteristics, or qualities, without the distinctive feature of belonging to a concrete space and time. Fools are active in plotting in every possible way and means against civility, trying to rob it, out of jealousy, of the joyful, productive virtues of which he himself was deprived, whether due to accident or by choice. Protected from the harm and risk of existence due to his folly, he slips into the realm of the unreal absurd. This produces a millenarian zeal for the future. Fools feed on the vibratory delirium of their victims, produced through transformed substances. There seems to be a core question of how foolery became normalised over history.
The deadline for submissions is the end of August 2025.
The IPA editors and editorial board
4th August, 2025
Article image: "The Stańczyk", painting by Polish artist Jan Matejko (self portrait, oil on canvas, 1862, full title: "Stańczyk during a ball at Queen Bona's court after the loss of Smolensk", source: Wikimedia).