Helena de Bres
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Roland Barthes writes in Mythologies, “The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is done now by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip characters.” Twins, with their shape-shifting talents, have occupied both of these roles in human history. In the ancient Indo-European world, they appeared as the multicultural Divine Twins, astral-equestrian aiders of humanity and saviors of shipwrecked sailors. In the early twentieth century, they starred as one of the best-known trademarks in American advertising: Goldie and Dustie, the mascots of Gold Dust washing powder. Physically, cognitively, emotionally, agentially, twins tend not to see or treat each other (to quote the writer Helen Garner on humans more generally) as “discrete bubbles floating past each other and sometimes colliding.” Instead they “overlap, seep into each other’s lives, penetrate the fabric of each other.” Twins also show how appealing this alternative conception of personhood is.

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How to Be Multiple

The Philosophy of Twins

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