The double, doppelganger, is mostly understood as a peculiar figure that emerged in nineteenth-century Romantic and gothic literature. Far from being a merely esoteric entity, however, this book argues that the double, although it mostly goes unnoticed, is a widespread phenomenon that has significant influence on our lives. It is an inherent key element of human subjectivity whose functions, forms, and effects have not yet gained the serious consideration they merit. Drawing on literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, and combining a personal story with theoretical interventions, Double Trouble develops a novel understanding of the double and human subjectivity in the last two centuries. It begins with the singular and narcissistic double of Romanticism and gradually moves to the multiple doubles implicated by Postmodernism. The double is what defies unicity and opens up the subject to multiplicity. Consequently, it gradually emerges as a bridge between the I and the Other, identity and difference, philosophy and literature, theory and praxis.

We are used to seeing the everyday as an ordinary aspect of life, something that we need to 'overcome', whereas it actually plays a crucial role in any event of our lives. This highly original book engages with a range of thinkers and texts from across the fields of phenomenology, psychoanalysis and critical theory, including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Freud and Benjamin, together with innovative analysis of French literature and the visual arts, to demonstrate that the role of repetition and deferral in modernity has changed dramatically. Rather than allowing the everyday gradually to integrate singular events into its repetitive texture, events are experienced now as self-enclosed entities, allegedly disconnected from the everyday, leading to its impoverishment. The book thus offers a novel understanding of being, body, trauma and shock, but within the framework of the everyday as a concept that deserves a theory of its very own.

The double, doppelganger, is mostly understood as a peculiar figure that emerged in nineteenth-century Romantic and gothic literature. Far from being a merely esoteric entity, however, this book argues that the double, although it mostly goes unnoticed, is a widespread phenomenon that has significant influence on our lives. It is an inherent key element of human subjectivity whose functions, forms, and effects have not yet gained the serious consideration they merit. Drawing on literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, and combining a personal story with theoretical interventions, Double Trouble develops a novel understanding of the double and human subjectivity in the last two centuries. It begins with the singular and narcissistic double of Romanticism and gradually moves to the multiple doubles implicated by Postmodernism. The double is what defies unicity and opens up the subject to multiplicity. Consequently, it gradually emerges as a bridge between the I and the Other, identity and difference, philosophy and literature, theory and praxis.

" La vraie philosophie est de rapprendre a voir le monde, et en ce sens une histoire racontee peut signifier le monde avec autant de "p- fondeur" qu'un traite de philosophie. Nous prenons en main notre sort, nous devenons responsables de notre histoire par la reflexion, mais aussi bien par une decision ou nous engageons notre vie, et dans les deux cas 1 il s'agit d'un acte violent qui se verifie en s'exercant ." Notre etude aura pour tache d'elucider ce passage, ecrit par Maurice Merleau-Ponty dans l'avant-propos de sa Phenomenologie de la perception. S'agit-il d'une nouvelle notion de la philosophie comme apprentissage, non seulement d'un regard theorique sur le monde, mais aussi et surtout d'un regard engage, un regard qui est deja dans le monde ? La philosophie pourra- elle nous apprendre comment " prendre en main notre sort ", comment faire de notre histoire personnelle une histoire racontee, inventee et creee par la reflexion ? Quelle pourrait donc etre cette reflexion en tant qu'acte violent ? Est-ce une philosophie qui se mele a la vie, qui se confond avec elle tout en la rappelant, en la reapprenant, une facon oubliee de regarder qui est en meme temps une facon oubliee de vivre ? Et de quelle vie s'agit-il ? Celle du philosophe meme, de ses lecteurs ou de l'homme en tant que tel ? Ce sont ces questions qui vont nous occuper dans les pages qui