This book offers a political anthropological discussion of our contemporary situation regarding sceptical attitudes towards scientific expertise and authority, and the increasing role of power and politics. It does so using an exploration of the “fool” or “gnostic fool” as a type, drawing on ideas about the modality of the anthropological trickster figure and the mentalities that this type disseminates.

Arguing that a recent dissolution of stable identities has made orderly action and connections impossible, the author shows that we are now entering into a confused understanding of ourselves, no longer linked to history or society, nor to our sexes or personality. In this period, growing interest in magical and occult traditions reflects increasing feelings of powerlessness against the whims of politics, power and authority; where rational thinking disappoints and fails, a new Gnostic universe is born. The relationship between standard uses of the “fool” and the “gnostic fool” is addressed using political and social theory, sociology and anthropology, religious studies, and the history of ideas. The book thus combines a study of familiar, traditional texts with unusual phenomena from both recent and distant history, elucidating their surprising prevalence in surrounding contemporary power structures. Addressing a crucial aspect of contemporary reality, characterising and interrogating the (self-)production of fools and the Gnostic intellectual type, it details a serious and puzzling blind spot in academic scholarship.

As such, it will be of central relevance to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students working in anthropology, ethnography, sociology, historical sociology, religious studies, and philosophy worldwide.