Introduction : beginning to rethink twins / Philip M. Peek -- Twins and double beings among the Bamana and Maninka of Mali / Pascal James Imperato and Gavin H. Imperato -- Twins and intertwinement : reflections on ambiguity and ambivalence in northwestern Namibia / Steven Van Wolputte -- Sustaining the oneness in their twoness : poetics of twin figures (ère ìbejì) among the Yoruba / Babatunde Lawal -- "Son dos los jimagüas" ("the twins are two") : worship of the sacred twins in Lucumí religious culture / Ysamur Flores-Pena -- Twins, couples, and doubles and the negotiation of spirit-human identities among the Win / Susan Cooksey -- Double portraits : images of twinness in West African studio photography / C. Angelo Micheli -- Forever liminal : twins among the Kapsiki/Higi of north Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria / Walter E.A. Van Beek -- Snake, bush, and metaphor : twinship among Ubangians / Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers -- Fiction and forbidden sexual fantasy in the culture of Temne twins / Frederick John Lamp -- Embodied dilemma : Tabwa twinship in thought and performance / Allen F. Roberts -- Children of the moon : twins in Luba art and ontology / Mary Nooter Roberts -- Two equals three : twins and the trickster in Haitian vodou / Marilyn Houlberg -- Divine children : the ibejis and the erês in Brazilian candomblé / Stefania Capone -- The ambiguous ordinariness of Yoruba twins / Elisha P. Renne -- Twins, albinos, and vanishing prisoners : a Mozambican theory of political power / Paulo Granjo.

Publisher Description

Human twins have many meanings and different histories. They have been seen as gods and monsters, signs of danger, death, and sexual deviance. They are taken as objects of wonder and violent repression, the subjects of scientific experiment. Now millions are born through fertility technologies. Their history is often buried in philosophies and medical theories, religious and scientific practices, and countless stories of devotion and tragedy. In this history of superstitions and marvels, fantasies and experiments, William Viney—himself a twin—shows how the use and abuse of twins has helped to shape the world in which we live. This book has been written not just for twins, but for anyone interested in their historical, global, and political impact.

The tale of twins being reunited after a long separation is a trope that has been endlessly repeated and reworked across different cultures and throughout history, with each moment adapting the twin plot to address its current cultural tensions. In this study, Edward King demonstrates how twins are a means of exploring the social implications of hyper-connectivity and the compromising relationship between humans and digital information, their environment and their genetics. As King demonstrates, twins tell us about the changing forms of connectivity and power in contemporary culture and what new conceptions of the human they present us with. Taking account of a broad range of literary, cultural and scientific practices, Entwined Being probes discussions surrounding twins such as: - The way in which they appear in behavioral genetics as a way of identifying inherited predispositions to social media - How their faces interrupt biometric interfaces such as facial recognition software and undermine advances in neo-liberal surveillance systems - How they represent the uncanny and the weird in the horror genre and how this questions ideologies of communications media and the connectivity it enables - Their association with telepathy and cybernetics in science fiction - Their construction as models for entangled being in ecological thought Drawing upon the literary and filmic works of Ken Follet, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Bruce Chatwin, Shelley Jackson, Brian de Palma, Peter Greenway and David Cronenberg, as well as science fiction literature and the television series Orphan Black, King illuminates how twins are employed across a range of disciplines to envision a critical re-conception of the human in times of digital integration and ecological crisis.

The cultural fantasy of twins imagines them as physically and behaviorally identical. Media portrayals consistently offer the spectacle of twins who share an insular closeness and perform a supposed alikeness--standing side by side, speaking and acting in unison. Treating twinship as a cultural phenomenon, this first comprehensive study of twins in American literature and popular culture examines the historical narrative--within the discourses of experimentation, aberrance and eugenics--and how it has shaped their representations in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This book makes a significant addition to the field of literary criticism on African Diaspora literatures. In one volume, it brings together the novels of eight transnational African Diaspora women writers, Yaa Gyasi, Chika Unigwe, Chimamanda Adichie, Imbole Mbue, NoViolet Bulawayo, Aminatta Forna, Taiye Selasi, and Leila Aboulela, and positions them as chroniclers of African immigrant experiences. The book inspires critical readings of these writers’ works by revealing emerging trends in women’s literature as they are being determined and redefined by immigration. As transnational subjects, the writers engage various meanings of mobility and exhibit innovative aesthetic styles; they create awareness on gender identities and transformations, constructions of home and belonging, as well as the politics of citizenship in the hostland. The book also highlights the importance of reverse migrations and performance returns to the homeland as an expression of human desire for home and belonging, and taken as a whole, it enhances our understanding of how migration and transnational existence are (re)shaping immigrant subjects. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and researchers of African Diaspora literatures and gender studies, who will find this book beneficial for investigating critical trends, approaches to transnational literature, and for comprehending the diasporic burdens that transnational immigrants bear.

The twin deities known by the ancient Greeks as the Dioskouroi, and by the Romans as the Gemini, were popular figures in the classical world. They were especially connected with youth, low status and service, and were embraced by the common people in a way that eluded those gods associated with regal magnificence or the ruling classes. Despite their popularity, no dedicated study has been published on the horse gods for over a hundred years. Henry John Walker here addresses this neglect. His comparative study traces the origins, meanings and applications of the twin divinities to social and ritual settings in Greece, Vedic India (where the brothers named Castor and Pollux were revered as Indo-European gods called the Asvins), Etruria and classical Rome. He demonstrates, for example, that since the Dioskouroi were regarded as being halfway between gods and men, so young Spartans - undergoing a fierce and rigorous military training - saw themselves as standing midway between animal and human. Such creative interpretations of the myth thus played a central role in the culture and society of antiquity.