I have enjoyed the coffee while recording my paper for the on-line seminar “Kierkegaard in France” organised by CRASSH in cooperation with the Faculty of Divinity and French Department, University of Cambridge, UK. The seminar kicked off on Wednesday May 7, 2021 (Kierkegaard’s birthday) and was carried on every Friday on until June 25.

‘Maybe Women Should Not Be Allowed to Go to University…’

This statement – unacceptable, not to say scandalous, in our Western context – was penned by none other than the world-famous feminist and literary author Margaret Atwood in her novel Edible Women published in 1969. The words are uttered by one of the male characters in the book.

The idea of “Coffee with…” is to capture my encounter with an inspiring person as genuinely as possible and to emphasise our meeting as flesh and blood persons to fight the creeping domination of disincarnated relations of social media.

Reading dystopian novels by Margaret Atwood during a global lockdown might not have been the best idea. Or so I kept repeating to myself during the restless nights of spring 2020. I saw vivid parallels between the hostile takeover and subversion of the United States by the theocratic state of Gilead, as described by Atwood, and the restrictions inflicted on the population by governments the world over in the name of “public health”, thus supposedly “the higher good”, during the global health crisis caused by Covid-19.