Submission deadline: June 30, 2025

In one of his last Bustine di Minerva, titled “We Are All Mad” (“Siamo tutti matti”, Eco 2016: 465), Umberto Eco reflects on the relationship between normality, madness, and creativity, suggesting that everyone harbors a seed of madness, which can erupt and manifest in a productive form known as creativity.
This idea has held a prominent place in Western culture since Ancient Greece (Dodds 1951; Guidorizzi 2010), and throughout different historical periods and cultural contexts, the connection between madness and creativity has strengthened, evolving into a correlation and, in some cases, even an implication (cf. Becker  2014; Wittwoker & Wittwoker 1963). Over the centuries, one of the most enduring myths of our time (Barthes 1957) has gradually taken shape: the idea of a reciprocal relationship between creativity—as a form of divergent thinking that deviates from the norm (see Bartezzaghi 2021)—and madness—as a departure from a rational normality (Foucault 1961).