Book Review: Doppleganger
A few years ago, at a conference, I did the sort of “leadership activity” that usually makes me roll my eyes. We were given cards, each with one attribute, and asked to go around exchanging them until we ended up with five cards that accurately captured our values. We then arranged the cards in order.
I don’t remember all the values I selected, but one I was surprised to find I clung to was integrity. I had never before considered “integrity” a top-five priority for myself, but in that moment and the years since, I have returned to it again and again.
When I look back on my life and my choices, integrity is everywhere – I have always wanted all the parts of my life to be integrated, to feel like a whole person who is honest about who I am. Whether that is my high-school self objecting to loving Torah while not laying tefillin or my adult commitment to speaking truthfully about my politics, “am I acting with integrity” has been a central guiding question, easier to ask myself now that I have the words for it.
At the beginning of a job search and at a time of upheaval in the world and in my beloved Jewish communities, I was excited to read Naomi Klein’s book, Doppleganger – an exploration of the themes of doubling and invisibility through her experiences of being confused for Naomi Wolf.
Klein, a leftist writer and activist, has long been a familiar face of the anti-capitalist left, from Occupy to her time as a surrogate for Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, Naomi Wolf rose to prominence with her book The Beauty Myth, a 90s feminist classic that argues that women’s social and political gains have been accompanied by increased focus on a requirement of physical beauty as a tactic to keep women from attaining too much power. Klein has remained relatively consistent in her politics throughout her career. Wolf, though, has become a darling of the far right. She regularly appears on Steve Bannon’s radio show, and is a Covid conspiracy theorist.
Beginning on Twitter, though, Klein and Wolf have often been confused, with users often tagging Klein when trying to criticize Wolf, and less frequently vice-versa. Klein cites a viral ditty that captures some of the tenor of the confusion (she does not know its original writer): “If the Naomi be Klein/ you’re doin just fine/ If the Naomi be Wolf/ Oh buddy. Oooof.”
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