If you’ve ever been mistaken for someone else, you know what a weird experience it can be—knowing there’s someone else out there in the world who looks exactly like you. Now imagine you’re a famous person who gets mistaken for another person, just because you share a first name, gender, and certain degree of prominence.
That’s what happens to Canadian author, journalist, activist, and filmmaker Naomi Klein, and forms the subject of her latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Klein appears tonight at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, in conversation with former CBC Ottawa host and current Carleton University journalism professor Adrian Harewood, to discuss the book and the experiences that led her to write it.
Cover of Doppelganger. Image: Kourosh Keshiri.
Over the past 20 years, Klein, a prolific author who is well-known for her work in the climate justice and anti-capitalist spaces, has often been confused with another prominent Naomi: Wolf, feminist author of The Beauty Myth and more recently known for holding and promoting conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine views. Klein and Wolf are, of course, distinct human beings with distinct views and bodies of work; nonetheless, Klein felt her reality shaken by this pervasive conflation of her with Wolf and the weight of knowing many people believed her to be someone else—someone whose views were not her own. Doppelganger emerged from those feelings and experiences, using them as a stepping stone into reflections on artificial intelligence, social media, wellness culture, the destabilized political environment, and the overlapping economic, environmental, and health crises that have converged in recent years.
“Naomi Klein is returning to the Writers Festival Stage for the first time since 9/11. In Doppelganger, she has managed to write a book that is at once her most deeply personal and also her most universal,” says Sean Wilson, artistic director of the Writers Festival. “For all the talk of likes and shares, how is it that the technology that isolates us somehow makes us believe that we are at once very much our own person and also in charge of our destiny?”
If you’ve ever read anything by Naomi Klein, you will know she pulls no punches. Tonight’s conversation is bound to be a compelling one.
Naomi Klein appears in conversation with Adrian Harewood at Christ Church Cathedral this evening at 7pm as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Tickets ($25 advance, $30 at the door) are on sale through writersfest.org. Books will be available for purchase and signature.
