ABSTRACT
The chapter by Michał Izak and Monika Kostera, “King Popiel, the Killer Mice and the Story of the Post-Lie Leadership”, retells the legend of old king Popiel and the killer mice and reveals the problems of consequences of disconnecting leadership from the people and the land, while also showing a way out of the seemingly desperate situation this kind of leadership produces. They situate and relate their story to our current context as a time of uncertainty and turbulence, placed in a “Baumanian” interregnum (eroding Capitalism, disintegration of democratic and economic institutions and the eco-crisis). What they show is the importance of using imagination in order to point to natural and social roots and consequences of leadership inviting us to a creative journey to find ways of reclaiming the missing roots, or what we regard as the truth (and practice) of leadership. The morale of their story emphasizes that leadership needs to be in contact with land and people, as otherwise it and its power lose legitimization, turning into usurpation in need of constructed justifications to persevere as their retelling demonstrates revealingly.
