ABSTRACT
There is a tradition of wise fools dating back hundreds of years, jesters who unmask power and who get away with it because of their ability to pass unpalatable truths under the guise of humor. Probably used most famously in King Lear, the wise fool offers a corrective to concentrated power. In democratic contexts, the role of the wise fool is both important and, as these chapters illustrate, quite complex. In democracies, even representative ones like the U.S., there is a presumption that the people are already participating in, if not actually governing, the nation. Correction in the form of the wise fool comes from below, but in a democracy, the power is spread among the people, or, among the governed. Because of the nature and the extent of the public’s presumed role in governance, the fool’s position is not unambiguously powerless. But such fools speak for the people, and therefore speak in important ways. As these chapters demonstrate, the wise fool fulfills many important functions in our contemporary politics.
