Juliana de Nooy. Twins in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Look Twice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 [Book review]

What is exceptional about Juliana de Nooy’s book on the twins is the insight that, despite the fascination exercised by the twins since ancient time, there appears to be nothing exceptional about them. Stories about twins are not presentations of a curiosity or even an aberration. Rather, narratives about twins highlight difference as the condition of the possibility of culture. This difference comes to the fore because the image of the twins ineluctably brings to mind the notion of sameness. However, as de Nooy argues throughout Twins in Contemporary Literature and Culture, sameness can never sustain itself: even identical twins are never absolutely the same. Thus, the twins give rise to a critique of sameness and a philosophy of difference.