Lucero

Knock on Wood: Materiality, Superstition, and the Limits of Reason

Superstitions may order the lived world, but they remit believers to the realm of the unseen, the imaginary, and the disembodied. Few idioms better distill that duality than the phrase “knock on wood,” which leans on the material to conjure up the benevolence of fate.

For this 2026 edition of Lucero, we invite submissions that consider the potential of “knocking on wood” not just as a form of superstitious language, but rather as a bridge between the material and the more-than-material.

Historically, Hispano- and Lusophone studies have grappled with hegemonic binaries: the European against the American, the civilized against the not, the subject against the object. This ordering—inseparable from the erasure of Indigenous epistemologies and the dehumanization of racialized bodies—rested on a notion of matter as passive and extractable. Yet the gesture of knocking on wood offers the possibility of matter’s agency. It invites us to consider a culture against reason, working with and beyond the notion of the superstitious.

We call for work that uncovers the material substrates of past political formations, perhaps by gazing with new eyes into the archive, or by considering matter beyond duality through transcultural or new materialisms. Thinking with “On stones,” the artwork heading our call for papers, we ask: How might the material order knowledge itself, not just as support but as ordering logic? How might the archive of colonial encounters reveal the agency of the non-human? How might “superstitious” practices function against the disenchantment of the world? If classical materialism understands matter as an inert element of historical process, and new materialism emphasizes the agency thereof, “knock on wood” offers an avenue to think both ways and beyond.

We welcome interdisciplinary submissions in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Submissions can take many forms, including but not limited to research articles, critical essays, creative writing, translations, illustrations, photography, and new or hybrid genres.

Access our guidelines, the Spanish and Portuguese CFP, and the submission portal via e-scholarship.