Twins and Deviance: Law, Crime, Sex, Society, and Family
This book draws on nearly one thousand cases and anecdotes about twins bending and breaking rules in order to fulfill or flout tenets of twinhood. Society’s unwillingness to contextualize mores and policies to suit twins may perpetuate controversy and law-breaking. Twins and Deviance shows how twins’ allegedly sacred bond violates conventions beginning at conception. Throughout their lives, they may be victimized, tortured, and neglected specifically because of their bond. Twins have lives that matter – their bond is not static or unconditional, it may be fluent and emotional. The book paints a picture of twin individuals whose lives relate to contemporary readers’ and audiences’ lives because they are weird, eccentric, ritualized, fetishized, pornographized, criminalized, and chastised by society; but what is especially interesting about twins is that society has institutionalized controversial practices and traditions sometimes implicitly or explicitly demanding that twinhood be realized or dishonored so that twins comply with social norms and expectations. Offering a truculent, unpretentious, and straightforward representation of contemporary society, Twins and Deviance does not defend or defy society’s strange, niche, and shaded view of twins. Rather, it artfully and sensitively depicts twins as historically and presently seeming like gods, heroes, renegades, saviors, mutations, terrorists, gangs, and betrayers; and skillfully discusses twins’ bodies to elucidate their individuality, decode their correspondence, and explore analytical tributaries new to sociocultural research. Using vivid examples, Twins and Deviance postulates that twins intrigue and entrance singletons because they deviate from norms, embody principles of duality, fulfill self-reflexive fantasies, and symbolize eternal life and the afterlife. The value of twins and twinhood to singletons is evident in psychoanalysis, reflections, religion and mythology, words, and politics; and yet, this is the only book to bring to light the immense depth of this captivating insight. Twins and Deviance challenges and improves previous research by collecting new topics to retool twins and deviance discussions. As such, it is a must-read for students, professors, and audiences engaging in gender, justice, sexuality, legal, and cultural studies, and all researchers conducting twin studies.
Carmen M. Cusack, JD, PhD, teaches criminal justice and human services at Nova Southeastern University, USA. She is the editor of Journal of Law and Social Deviance, and researches criminal justice, law, deviance, and psychosociology. Recently, she has consulted for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the topic of transgender parolees and for AIDS Health on the subjects of pornography and insemination. Her work is regularly cited by major periodicals and media outlets.
"Twins and Deviance: Law, Crime, Sex, Society, and Family is an interdisciplinary book steering readers on a journey through the intrinsically unique development of twins. Twins’ voyage through existence is unlike that of singletons, marked by inexplicable relationships and mythically and sociologically traditional roles. Their journeys also produce parallel changes in the lives of their parents. Twins and Deviance analyzes forces in twins’ development and the choices that challenge them to own, question, or disavow that status. The frequent occurrence of twins in myth cycles, particularly in myths of origin, highlights their significance in the human psyche and in religious systems, which depend upon the metaphors of myth for their meaning. How these themes play out in twins’ roles and behaviors in society can be directly related to their mythic force."
Lesley A. Northup Associate Professor, Dean of the Honors College in the Department of Religious Studies, Florida International University
"[Carmen Cusack] extensively explores what it is to be a twin, or parents, family members, friends, teachers, or acquaintances of twins, living in a world dominated by singletons. Cusack introduces readers to the complexity surrounding popular scientific and societal definitions of twins, including when the word describes a cellular division or a familial relationship. [...] Most importantly, Cusack exhaustively informs readers to the social impact the “twin” label carries."
Joanne Wolf Small, MSW, LCSW-C Journal of Law and Social Deviance, 13 (2017)
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