Queered individuality
Cultural responses to conjoined babies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8243192 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joseph E Holloway (0000-0002-2346-2692, University of Exeter, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychoanalysis Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1088-0763 • E-ISSN: 1543-3390 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41282-025-00602-4 |
| OpenAlex | W7114910495 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
Cultural fascination towards conjoined babies draws on tension between the myth of a discrete non-disabled ‘individual’ that enjoys sovereign agency over their bodymind, and porous existence in a globally interdependent world. I analyse fictional and non-fictional conjoined twins from the 1970s to the present within a Kristevan framework to unpick the normalisation strategy of non-emergency separation, reading this as informed by Kleinian projective identification. Conjoined babies evoke the repressed knowledge that we have all been intrasubjective in the womb. To resist the return of this knowledge, and to reiterate the non-disabled self as a discrete ‘individual’, non-disabled authors instead project outwards onto conjoined babies
Agency (philosophy · Ancestor · Conjoined twins · Mythology · Narrative · Projective test · Reading (process · Child Welfare and Adoption · Children's Rights and Participation · Disability Rights and Representation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |