Siamese Twins

In an article on Dinh Q Le's current exhibit at the Asia Society, the

NY Times (Oct 7, p E42) says at one point that he learned

that "Sianese twins were revered as magical beings in some

underdeveloped areas...."

Can any of you confirm this? I have heard more often of shame and a

sense of moral failure...but the world is vast, and varied.

Thanks for any light you can shed.

Diane

Diane,

The Dai Viet Su ky toan thu mentions two headed babies, but not with a sense of shame. I am not sure if the appearance was noted with wonder -- I read the text about ten years ago -- but it was definitely something that the chronicler thought worthy of mention. This nugget was found in the text from somewhere between the 11th and 14th century.

In SE Asia, for what it is worth, sometimes such unusual beings (the very short, albinos, etc) were regarded as potent beings. I seem to remember that Santiago Alvarez, in Recalling the Revolution (a memoir of the Philippine revolution), discussed how Bonifacio had such individuals around him because they were potent.

More proof that historical texts can sometimes compete with scandal sheets . . .

Shawn McHale

Hi all;

The citation for the DVSKTT are as follows: two-headed babies (1300),

conjoined twins (1304) and spontaneous gender reassignment (1351): these occurrences/bad omens in the DVSKTT highlight a rhetoric that characterizes an era that is out of whack (cosmologically and morally).

Cheers,

Gino

Hi Diane, I don't know of any literature about Siamese twins, but your

question made me think about the young twin boys who were revered as

leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (may not have been the exact name)

in Burma (I think, might have been Southern Thailand) a few years ago.

They were believed to have magical powers related to their twin-ship.

Trude

Diane,

Personally, I don't know the answer to your question. However, Ann Fadiman, in her book "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," pointed out that the Hmong people consider those with epilepsy as special beings with certain magical power, if memory serves me right. It might be possible that siamese twins would be listed in a similar category of special people. Fadiman has an extensive bibliography in her book that would be useful to look up original sources documenting such beliefs.

When Dinh Q. Le mentioned "underdeveloped areas" [sic], s/he most likely referred to ethnic minorities in the highlands. It is possible that one or more groups would hold this belief. That said, I am not discounting the possibility that the Kinhs (or some of its subgroups) have such belief. I just don't have a feeling about or knowledge of it one way or the other.

Have fun researching,

Hien

I am not sure of the status of siamese twins in the highlands in the

peninsula, but it is probably considered an important disturbance of

the world order rather than anything good. If we take the fate of

regular twins as an indication, many accounts exist of the birth of

twins being considered an extremely negative event among the Akha.

Henri Roux stated in 1924 that in northern Laos on the Vietnamese

border, the Akha would immediately kill both twins while the parents

had to conduct important rituals to purify themselves as well as the

whole village to avoid individual and collective bad luck. In other

groups in that area, says Roux, one twin would be killed to 'normalise'

the situation of the remaining one, with purification rituals also

needing to be conducted.

Jean Michaud

Dear Diane,

As someone who has followed Dinh Q. Le's work for some years, I can offer this bit of analysis.

I have no first hand ethnographic evidence to support Dinh's statement but I would suspect that if there are families that revere their siamese twins as magical beings it is because it helps them to cope with the psychological trauma of it. Most of these children do not survive and their images are placed on ancestral altars as a way to compensate for the tragedy of it. I am saying this because I am also trying to make sense of Dinh's statement. Because in my own observation and experience, abnormalities in children are usually shunned and the children who suffer from abnormalities are extremely ostracized. Having a two headed child is an aberration and must be horrific for mothers who have no medical resources nor any medical knowledge about siamese twins. When these children die they can only attribute their presence and short life to divine intervention or magic. I think that this is what Dinh is trying to make sense of and interpret in his works. And I don't think he is alluding to people in the highlands since he is commenting on the high rate of siamese births due to Agent Orange and therefore not commenting on ethnic minorities specifically at all.

Hope this helps to unravel the loaded and complex significance of his work. If you are interested in his work there is a lot of literature in journals as well as catalogues of his previous exhibitions that are available on the web or I can steer you in the right direction.

Nora