How to Be Multiple by Helena de Bres

Philosophy professor and identical twin Helena de Bres takes the
curious experience of being a twin as a lens through which to
reconsider our place in the world and how we relate to others.
Which one are you? Are you the same? Can you read each other's minds?
Identical twins get asked the weirdest existential questions, by strangers,
loved ones, and even themselves. For twins fascinate all of us--twins
included. For Helena de Bres, this fascination was never far from philosophy's
most unnerving unknowns. What makes someone themself rather than
someone else? Can one person be housed in two bodies? What does perfect
love look like? Can we really act freely?
Drawing from her relationship with her own twin, Julia, and accompanied by
Julia's line drawings, Helena uses twinhood to rethink the limits of
personhood, consciousness, love, freedom, and justice. With her inimitably
candid, goofy, brilliant voice, she explores the long tradition of twin
representations in art, myth, and popular culture; twins--peculiar social
standing; and what it's really like to be one of two. With hope and humor, she
argues that our reactions to twins reveal our broader desires and fears about
selfhood, fate, and human connection, and that reflecting on twinhood can
help each of us--twins and singletons alike--to recognize our own multiplicity,
and approach life with greater curiosity, imagination, and courage.

Helena de Bres is an associate professor of philosophy at Wellesley College,
where she researches and teaches ethics, philosophy of literature, and
political theory. Her essays and humor writing have appeared in The Point, the
New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Colorado Review, and
McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others. Her book Artful Truths: The
Philosophy of Memoir was published by the University of Chicago Press in
2021. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury
On Sale: Nov 7/23
5.51 x 8.25 • 272 pages
B&w images throughout
9781639730346 • $38.99 • CL - With dust jacket
Philosophy / Social