Book excerpt: "The book examines the doppelgèanger persona's gradual shift to representations of the self as simulacrum and responds to changing conceptions of identity that celebrate the potentiality of alterity. Varied literary, visual, and digital narratives of the self showcase the doppelgèanger as an increasingly image-based construction.The literature of Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes reveal the birth of multiple selfhoods that are rooted in temporality; Willem Hermans, Jose Saramago, and Denis Villeneuve put forth under-represented experiences of alienation and the remedial powers of the alter; contemporary photographic campaigns by Cornelia Hedgier and Franðcois Brunelle and digital doppelgèanger series such as "twin strangers" lead trends in visual culture and new media where the encounter between self and double is constructive, performative, and interactive. Delineating a structural change, the book proposes a paradigm shift that celebrates the female double, multiplicity, and visual and digital engagement and furnishes the reader with an expanded conception of the doppelgèanger figure"--