Conclusions: Moving Through Life as a Twin

Abstract

The aim of this book has been to reveal and investigate the social character of twinship. Twins, like the rest of us, live in society. Twinship is therefore an identity that is informed by the broader cultural contexts within which twins live out their lives and an identity that has to be established and validated through social interaction. In performing their identities, twins variously reproduce, reject, resist and reconfigure dominant discourses of twinship. As such, twins have a role to play in constructing twinship. Yet, although twins may utilise the resources of their bodies, space and talk to help them to activate particular versions of identity, the relative success of their impression management will depend on how far external others are prepared to endorse and legitimise their versions of identity. Twins therefore live out their lives in various enabling and constraining contexts.