Stultifera Navis is that kind of publication.
The name comes from Sebastian Brant’s fifteenth-century poem Das Narrenschiff, the Ship of Fools, a vessel carrying the self-satisfied, the willfully blind, and the comfortably numb toward a destination none of them has bothered to question. Michel Foucault later borrowed the image to describe how societies isolate the voices they find inconvenient. The editorial choice of that title is itself a statement: this is a magazine written by people who suspect we are all on that ship, and who would rather look at the horizon than rearrange the deck chairs.
The current issue proves the point.
What you will find aboard
The thematic center of gravity is war, examined from angles that mainstream commentary rarely touches.
Calogero Bonasia opens with a long essay on how sacred texts become instruments of political expropriation, tracing the precise point at which theology stops being a framework for meaning and starts functioning as an ideology of dispossession. The analysis is informed by organizational theory, where the gap between what is declared and what is practiced is often the most revealing variable, and applies it, with unflinching clarity, to the current Israeli-Palestinian catastrophe.
Otti Vogt follows with a piece asking a question many find uncomfortable: when does the accusation of antisemitism become a rhetorical shield that protects state violence from legitimate criticism? The distinction between judging a government’s ideology and hating a people is the fulcrum of the argument, and Vogt handles it with the intellectual precision it demands.
Carlo Mazzucchelli, co-editor of the magazine, contributes a reflection on fire, technology, and war that reaches back to the myth of Prometheus to interrogate our self-appointed role as modern Titans, armed with tools whose consequences we barely comprehend.
Francesco Varanini, the other co-editor, curates a reading list built around a single, devastating question: can war resolve conflicts, or can it only create the illusion that we have pushed them far enough away? He draws on Gaston Bouthoul, Franco Fornari, and Edward Bond to guide the reader’s reflection.
But the issue is far from monothematic. Francesco Mantello contributes a substantial essay on what it means to live in permanent exception, a condition he describes as systemic trauma, drawing on Carl Schmitt’s concept of the state of exception and the psychology of complex trauma. Leonardo Lastilla dismantles the rhetoric of toxic positivity, that social analgesic which numbs critical thinking by pretending pain does not exist. Gianluca Garofalo raises the alarm on a new form of intellectual erasure: in the age of AI-mediated distribution, the risk is no longer being plagiarized, but being silently replaced.
And then there is poetry. Anna Salzano’s Definisci bambino responds to a chilling moment in Italian television, when a public figure was asked to “define child” in reference to the children of Gaza, as though childhood were a category open to negotiation.
There is fiction. There is philosophy, including a delightful essay by Keren Ponzo that starts from the myth that bumblebees should not be able to fly and arrives, by way of a debunked 1934 calculation, at Aristotle’s distinction between potentiality and actuality.
There is, in short, the kind of intellectual variety that only emerges when a publication trusts its readers enough to offer them complexity without apologizing for it.
Why this matters now
We live in an information ecosystem designed to produce reaction, not reflection. Algorithms reward speed, brevity, and emotional activation. The result is a public discourse that confuses intensity with depth and opinion with analysis.
Stultifera Navis operates on the opposite principle. Its essays are long. They require effort. They do not conclude with convenient takeaways. They assume you are an adult who can tolerate ambiguity, follow an argument across several pages, and emerge with more questions than answers.
This is not a deficiency. It is the point.
The magazine is independent, non-commercial, and multilingual (primarily Italian, with occasional contributions in English and Spanish). It is edited by Carlo Mazzucchelli and Francesco Varanini, two intellectuals with decades of experience in organizational consulting, technology criticism, and cultural publishing. Their editorial vision is clear: to create a space where the tools of critical thinking are not merely invoked as a slogan, but actually exercised, on the page, in real time, against real problems.
An invitation
If the current global landscape leaves you with the sensation that something important is being systematically left unsaid, this issue of Stultifera Navis might be worth your time. It will not offer you comfort. It will not validate your existing opinions. It will, however, treat you as someone capable of thinking, which is more than most publications bother to do these days.
Read it here: www.stultiferanavis.it
Stultifera Navis is an independent cultural magazine. All content is freely accessible. The ship is sailing. You are welcome aboard.