Helena de Bres Explores Twinship in 'How to Be Multiple'

Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College, Helena de Bres, shares with us her fascinating new book about twins, How To Be Multiple. Illustrated by her own identical twin sister, Julia, How To Be Multiple explores the various philosophies of twinhood, the relationship between twins, her own personal experiences as a twin, the role of twins in history and pop culture, and much more. According to de Bres, “Twins just pop up everywhere, it turns out.. there are many films, novels, TV series, where twins make at least a short appearance and often, a longer one… Twins are always fun to think about, but they also have this deeper layer so they’re kind of a handy way to make whatever you’re doing both engaging, interesting, and have a little more depth to it.” Being a twin herself is certainly one of the main reasons de Bres wrote this book. Her and her twin, Julia, are not only identical twins, but also mirror twins, which are twins whose features appear on opposite sides of each another. de Bres pointed out, “I am the left side of the initial egg. I’m left-handed, my haircut is to the left, I have a mole in my left leg, and my sister is the right side. It’s really a trippy phenomenon. So she’s right handed and her facial symmetry, kind of, skews right.” de Bres also explained the reason that two siblings can be mirror image twins is that during conception, the fertilized egg divided later, and interestingly, if the egg had waited even longer to divide, those siblings would’ve been conjoined twins!

The book is comprised of 5 essays, each one a chapter, and while they can be read independently, their topics build on one another. Every one of the essays tackles a central, philosophical question that relates to twins. de Bres elaborated, “…each one has a question as a title that’s meant to refer to the kinds of questions that twins get asked all the time by non-twins in their everyday lives. The first chapter is called, ‘Which one are you?’ and it talks about this habit we have of binarizing or polarizing twins, so one for instance will be the good twin, one will be the evil twin… The second essay is called, ‘How many of you are there?’ and it talks about this question of the degree to which twins combine personhood. People often treat twins as somehow less than two people…. Essay number 3 is about love… it talks about two contrasting images of the twin relationship, one as being perfect and ideal, one as being pathological. Next one is, ‘How free are you?’ It talks about this question of the relative role of nature and nurture and human life, and how that relates to our ability to act freely…the final essay is about the singleton fascination with twins. Twins are often used… in the market as advertising tools. They’re used to sell things. Also, just for entertainment. People love watching things about twins, so twins are put to use, scientific use and intellectual use. I’m using twins in this book to think about human life.”