How to Be Multiple The Philosophy

of Twins

HELENA DE BRES

A lively philosophical meditation on the nature – and possibilities – of twinhood

Growing up, Helena de Bres was keenly aware of the singleton gaze: the way strangers gawked at the sight of her with her sister, the way they reduced their identities to ‘the twins’. Yet she knew that from the inside, twinhood offered a closeness and merger of selves unlike in any other relationship.

In HOW TO BE MULTIPLE, de Bres shows that twinhood is a uniquely clarifying lens through which to consider our place in the world and how we relate to other people. The way we think about twins offers fundamental insight into questions such as: What is a person? How should we treat one another? How free are we? Deftly weaving together literary and cultural history, philosophical inquiry and personal experience, de Bres examines such thorny issues as binary thinking, personal identity, objectification, romantic love, and friendship, revealing the limits of our individualistic thinking.

In this illuminating, entertaining book, wittily illustrated by her twin sister Julia de Bres, Helena de Bres ultimately suggests that to consider twinhood is to imagine the possibility of a more interconnected, capacious human future.

Helena de Bres is an associate professor of philosophy at Wellesley College, where she researches and teaches ethics, philosophy of literature, and political theory. She is an essayist, with pieces published and forthcoming in The New York Times, The Point, Aeon, Psyche, Brevity, The Los Angeles Review and The Colorado Review, among other outlets, and several popular humour pieces in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Rumpus. The author of ARTFUL TRUTHS: The Philosophy of Memoir (University of Chicago Press, 2021), she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

AGENT

Jeff Shreve

PUBLISHER

Princeton University Press

PUBLICATION

Spring 2024

STATUS

Draft manuscript

LENGTH

62,000 words

RIGHTS SOLD

• World English (Princeton University Press)

• France (Quanto)

• Germany (Aufbau)

• Romania (Editura Trei)

• Japan (Bungeishunju)