In the 20th century, it was precisely this deviation from a purported middle-class norm of how people should express themselves verbally, or how they should write or paint, that was put forward as a (rarely sufficient but almost always necessary) criterion for aesthetic and artistic quality.

This notion originated in the birth of middle class society at the end of the 18th century. One of the great paradoxes in the development of the bourgeois individual was that the individualism ultimately given emphasis in the 19th century was almost immediately turned against that same class. For bourgeois individuals, nothing seems to be have been more important at times than to create an image of themselves opposing the very middle class they belonged to. An important feature of the 19th century novel, written by and for the growing middle class, is indeed depictions of class members as dull, narrow-minded hypocrites.

And so it has continued. It is enough to visit any performance at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre or a municipal theatre, and the likelihood is rather high of being confronted by an audience filled with middle-aged couples from Östermalm and Vasastan who take delight in sniggering at how the middle class is derided by Lars Norén, Sara Stridsberg, Maria Sveland or Suzanne Osten.

One notable aspect of this tendency is that the normality which is viewed as a problem given its supposed restrictive effect on the development of the individual is so clearly defined. The nuclear family, for instance, is considered oppressive in its Western 1950s guise whereas a homosexual family consisting of the same sort of constellation, with two parents and two children, is never mentioned as a breeding ground for hypocrisy and violence. It is a similar case with the Muslim family, where even the woman’s traditional role as housewife is often defended by the same pundits who fiercely criticise the Western nuclear family for oppressing women.

Thus, what intellectuals see as problematic normality need not necessarily be normative or even most prevalent. The extremely widespread criticism of normality is rarely if ever seen, for instance, as normative or as a threat to pluralism and the openness of opinions. And that is a problem.

It is enough to join the debate and advocate some of the values or views labelled “normality” in the media nest of vipers – the Swedish nuclear family, tradition-based art, ideals of knowledge and education from past eras, child-rearing with clear boundaries etc. – to realise how limited the broad-mindedness of critics of normality really is. It is instead a matter of postulating a new kind of normality, one that is often just as narrow-minded and repressive as the normality constantly disparaged in the media.

I recall an affected discussion during a dinner with a leading, purportedly radical, cultural figure who teasingly made caustic attacks on my clothes, questioning, for instance, the use of ties, which he obviously viewed as a sign of a deeply deplorable slavery to tradition and rigid regularity.

It was so unpredictable when the same person defended Muslim women wearing a veil in the same affected manner a few hours later – noting that many of these women wore the veil voluntarily, that there were now veils available in trendy colours and that veils make women so beautiful by highlighting their eyes – that no one around the table seemed to contemplate the contradiction in his array of opinions.

We have asked a number of writers to contemplate, on Axess’s behalf, the conditions and function of normality in politics and cultural life today. But we are also providing a full-length portrait of the British author and pundit Theodore Dalrymple, which entails a further exploration of these vital questions.

In this issue of Axess, we are also doing violence to our own, challenging Alan Clark’s motto that we “don’t need any fucking new ideas”. We have done so by making a few overall adjustments in the layout, with the sole aim of making the magazine more visually accessible and attractive. We hope these changes prove satisfactory.