Index
Recapitulation
Refrain, Again 9
The Real McCoy was not.
I Vanishing Twins 19
Identical twins are creatures of a terrible ambiguity,
for they compromise the values we place upon the individual
even as they promise what we so desperately want:
faithful companionship, mutual understanding.
The vanishing twin is our solution and absolution.
II Doppelgangers 43
Siamesed twins are our horror stories, in bondage to likeness;
they remind us of fateful Doppelgangers from whom
we can never be separated till death do us part.
We minister to these doubles as we do to multiple personalities,
trying to restore singularity, the wholeness that is difference.
Ill Self-portraits 75
Yet our hunger for likeness, driven by an economic
system, a social fabric, and sets of technologies
that profit by making the similar seem remarkable,
leads us to ever more sophisticated semblances
which we are hard pressed to distinguish one from the other.
IV Second Nature 117
Nor are we now so clear about the boundaries
between ourselves and the rest of the animal world,
especially where those animals who speak our speeches and act our acts
appear to take on the best or most striking of human qualities.
V Seeing Double 145
Where, then, are our own skills at
disguise, decoy, and deception leading us?
VI Ditto 175
Toward anticipations that the copy will transcend the original
VII Once More, with Feeling 217
and toward a faith in reenactment and replication
as means to arrive at the truth.
VIII Discernment 265
In consequence, we confront on every horizon
problems of duplicity and virtuality which must be resolved
before we can reclaim or re-create a persuasive notion of authenticity.
Encore
315 Acknowledgments
The Parallel Universe
317 Notes
447 Index
