or “always having someone there for you.” Twins and twinship reflect multiple realities and selfways. Twins talk reflects these multiple realities and ambivalences, but first I need to comment on how twins themselves blur or bridge insider and outsider roles at Twins Days by becoming their own audience.
At all festivals and public events there are performers and audiences, but their roles are often blurred. At festivals the individual feels he is an indissoluble part of the collectivity, or the crowd—a member of the people’s mass body. In this scenario the individual body ceases to a certain extent to be itself, and at the same time people become aware of their sensual, material, bodily unity and community (Bakhtin [1965] cited in Morris 1995, 226). This is also true of twins festivals. One particular example is what I call a “twin agglomeration.” Twin agglomerations are spontaneous happenings that occur repeatedly throughout the festivals. During the festival, twins and the media are constantly taking pictures. For example, at the Twinsburg opening night picnic, there were twin sisters who wore identical, colorful West African tie-died dresses and elaborate cloth headdresses. As they agreeably posed for photographs, the twins photographing them would then join them as others took their picture. What was originally one set of twins in a photo became a line of twins standing shoulder to shoulder until the crowd got so large that no more twins fit into the picture. This happens repeatedly as festival twins switch from audience to performer with enthusiastic fluidity. Twins thus perform their identicality for the lens of other twins as well as for outside observers in which the press figures prominently. Although fun for twins, agglomerations are frustrating for professional photographers, as revealed to me by a photographer who was shooting pictures for an article in a popular science magazine. His attempts to capture one pair of twins were constantly thwarted by the continued entry of other sets of twins into his shot.
Attending a festival can be too much for some twins who try it once and never again. Yet for twins who are hooked, a large part of the pleasure comes from saving and planning for the Twins Days weekend. Our talking partners told us that when they return home, they no longer make any effort to dress alike (except for Julie and Jenny) and would feel uncomfortable doing so. It is also interesting that despite considerable effort invested in looking alike for two days, every set of twins we talked with remarked that they felt that most other sets of identical twins at the conference looked more alike than they did.
Insider View of Outsider View: What We Think You Think
Being among other sets of twins en masse ironically heightens twins’ senses of not only being twins but also of being anomalies. Our conversations with Twins Days twins reveal that they have much to say about the outsiders’ views of them as twins. Dorothy and I, before Twins Days, had never used or even heard of the term “singleton.” We certainly had a sense of being special because we were twins. We were lifelong actors of the twin game, but we had never developed a sense of “us” as twins versus a “them” of the single born. At Twinsburg, we found ourselves buying into and frequently referring to this new boundary of identity. Like other festival twins, we began to position ourselves as distinct from the singleton other. By performing twinship, Twins Days twins report that one of the attractions of participating in festivals is the sense of resisting or inverting the singleton norm. Twins festivals are a counterhegemonic act of resistance to outside moldings of one’s personality (cf. Lindholm 2001, 218) or the very nature of being. Festivals are occasions where, for a few days, a new space is created (Lindholm 2001, 219) in which twins as “us” become the norm and singletons become “them,” or the other. At festivals from a twin’s perspective, the singleton becomes an exotic other and twins the norm.
As the archetype of “twins as freaks” takes over, twins become normalized in the process. When performing as twins, insiders feel less freakish while at the same time actually confirming their freakishness to the singleton outsider. By reversing the rules, the “freaks” take over and the “mighty” are found wanting. By literally parading around, twins challenge what is seen as the natural order and everyday constructions of being. Many of our talking partners would remark on how good it felt to be surrounded by twins, to be in an environment where twins were the norm rather than the exception. For once they felt free from the question “What is it like to be a twin?” They repeatedly told us that it was liberating to talk to Dorothy and me as researchers who were also twins.
Twins Days has a way of creating militant twins. Tim and Tom had been in the festival parade before coming to us for an interview. When we asked them at the end of our interview if they wanted to add anything, Tom presented the following commentary:
Tom: Maybe one question [to pursue] is on the way society looks at us. Like when we were walking in the parade this morning and it was, “Oh, the twins are walking down the thing [street].” And I explain to somebody during the parade that the twin parade is like a regular parade. You have clowns and you have elephants. And I said, “We’re the elephants.” And then I told Tim, “There’s someone with a shovel in the back.” We’re the normal ones, OK? . . . When people ask you, “How do you feel about being a twin? Do you feel like you are special or do you feel like you are a mistake?” We’re what? One percent of the population? We’re born that way so we’re not a mistake. But when people ask me what does it feel like to be a twin, I answer, “What does it feel like not to be a twin?” I don’t know what it feels like to be a twin, I am a twin. I tell them, “I’m normal; you’re the freak.”
Dona: You’re [singleton] the one with the imaginary friend; mine was real.
My rejoinder to Tom may be an example of “leading the witness,” but it also brings out another important theme about the twin self.
Performing twinship is not just about seeing double or being identical. Twins come to Twinsburg (and the ITAs) to celebrate a sense of connectedness and mutuality that lies deep below the mere surface of their bodies. Karan’s observation below has an edge to it that was common in our interviews.
Karan: I keep saying this . . . it’s just on the surface but everyone keeps asking, “What is it like to be a twin?” I’m like, I have no idea what it’s not like to be a twin. So I have no idea what it’s like not to have somebody at my side all the time. . . . really I could care less about what it means not to be a twin.
Side-by-side festival twins perform what they see as a special sense of mutuality or a special kind or condition of self. Elizabeth Stewart (2003) calls this the “we-self.” It is a mutuality twins know firsthand and so they come together for a pan-twin celebration of this shared sense of connection. They refer to this as the twin bond; it is a special bond that twins feel yet singletons fail to appreciate or experience. Although this theme is developed in chapter 5, suffice it to say here that at festivals, twins celebrate the we-ness of their twinship. In doing so, they provide a counterpoint to what Wright (1997, 55) rather benignly characterizes as their “uncanny relationship” and what Maddox (2006, 66) refers to as a “quiet ecstasy of platonic love” among “every double one of them.” What twins feel the outsider does not understand is that their celebrated sense of connection is rooted not only in the similar faces and bodies but also in the sense of connectedness that comes from shared lives. Twins report a special sense of connectedness, or relatedness, that is unlike the other forms of relatedness they experience in their lives. What it means to be bonded as twins, they say, is something only a twin can know. Twins feel that within the twin dyad, needs for affiliation and autonomy work themselves out differently than for singletons. If culture exists in performance (Hastrup 1995a), then at the Twinsburg festival, identical twins may be seen as negotiating their duality and unity in what McCollum (2002) characterizes as a culture that views autonomy and relationality as opposites and privileges the former. For the adult talking partners, attending Twins Days results in a kind of renewal, or revitalization, of their twin identities and relationship. For two or three days of heightened experience, they relive, rehone and refashion, and share (with other twins) the practical experiences of twinship. Getting in the spirit at Twins Days, certainly among participant twins, fosters a sense of rebellion, of being apart from a singleton-dominated
