C‘is a very popular theme in literature and cinema that has always fascinated me, that of the double, in German Doppelgänger, composed of the word “doppel” which means double and “ganger” which means “which passes”.
In short, an entity that has our appearance and that mysteriously appears in our lives, often with malicious and persecutory intentions. The most striking cinematic example is that of Doctor Jeckill and Mister Hydeit most famous split personality in history.
Sigmund Freud had dedicated a study to this phenomenon, explaining how the double is nothing more than a projection of desires and instincts buried in the unconscious but there are those who assure that they have physically met their dopplehanger, while science assures us that noin the world there is a 0.11 percent probability that among 8 billion people there is a lookalike of us who knows where he is unconsciously leading a parallel life.
Serena Dandini (photo Gianmarco Chieregato)
It is clear that the theme is so attractive that it has inspired writers such as Calvin and Dostoevsky but I never would have thought that an activist and political analyst like Naomi Kleinauthor of popular essays such as No Logo and of Shock Economy had remained subjugated by this vertigo of the double as she tells us in her new work: Double. My journey into the mirror world (The ship of Theseus).
It all started almost by chance, when Klein realized that his identity on the internet in various social networks was being exchanged more and more often with that of another writer Naomi Wolf, famous years ago for an essay on beauty, who then entered into a reactionary drift and conspiracy theorist, even becoming a follower of Steve Bannon, international leader of populists. Practically his Doppelgänger. The algorithm has no mercy and if it decides to automatically replace you with another, the misunderstanding becomes a horror. Starting from this personal episode, Klein decides to tell how our digitalized universe has seduced us and dragged us into the creation of new online identities with which we have an obsessive relationship and only fear being banned, canceled, and indeed replaced.
But the “double” does not stop at our digital alter-egos, it is the whole world that has now duplicated itself, offering a version of parallel reality nourished by fake news and dominated by experts in various denialisms and post-truth. Is it possible to escape from this distorting mirror? And above all, which of the two worlds will prevail? You will only find out by reading… © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED