Twins as Doubtful Doubles: Postmodern Identity, Irony and Invention

Umberto Eco identifies as postmodern the need to acknowledge the repetition of past utterances, of familiar plots: I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her, ‘I love you madly’, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly’. At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of lost innocence. (1985: 67)