Paul B. Preciado (born 11 September 1970 as Beatriz Preciado), is a writer, philosopher and curator whose work focuses on applied and theoretical topics relating to identity, gender,
pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, , architecture and sexuality. Originally known as a female writer, in 2010 Preciado began a process of "slow transition" where he started taking
testosterone
Testosterone is the primary sex hormone and anabolic steroid in males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of Male reproductive system, male reproductive tissues such as testes and prostate, as well as promoting secondar ...
to
medically transition. From this point on he has publicly considered himself
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
as well as a
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
.
Career
Preciado came to
The New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
in New York from Spain on a
Fulbright
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
scholarship to get an MA in Philosophy.
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
and
Agnes Heller became mentors to Preciado. Despite taking a short gap during the spring of Preciado's first year at The New School, Preciado maintained close relations with many professors. In fact, in 1999, Derrida, one of Preciado's professors, invited Preciado to teach a seminar in Paris on forgiveness and the gift during transformation. After transitioning into his professional career, Preciado and his newfound partner, Alberto Perez, began to hold empowerment forums in impoverished communities. Later, he came back to the United States to complete his PhD in Philosophy and Theory of Architecture at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, writing a dissertation called, ''Pornotopía: Architecture and Sexuality in Playboy During the Cold War'' in 2010, which in book form later won the
Prix Sade
The prix Sade is a French literary prize created in 2001, sometimes called the Sade Prize in English, as an homage to the marquis de Sade.
History
Founded by Lionel Aracil and Frédéric Beigbeder, it is awarded by a jury as a "meeting of auth ...
in France.
Preciado has been professor of Political History of the Body, Gender Theory, and History of Performance at
Université Paris VIII and was the director of the Independent Studies Program (PEI) of the
Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA). He was Curator of Public Programs of documenta 14,
Kassel
Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...
and
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
.
Since January 2013, Preciado has regularly contributed to French newspaper ''
Libération
''Libération'' (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Initially positioned on the far-left of France's ...
''′s website Liberation.fr, in a column having gender, sexuality, love and biopower as recurrent themes.
In 2023, he directed a documentary film ''
Orlando, My Political Biography''. The film was screened at the
73rd Berlin International Film Festival
The 73rd annual Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale (), took place from 16 to 26 February 2023. It was the first completely in-person Berlinale since the 70th in 2020. The festival has added a new award for best te ...
in festival's Encounter section on 18 February 2023, where it was awarded a Special Jury Prize. In its announcement the jury described the film as "revelatory, moving and spirited." The film received a special mention in the festival category Best Documentary Film, and also the
Teddy Award
The Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival (the Berlinale). In the most part, the jury consists of organisers of gay a ...
as best documentary film.
Personal life
Known originally as a female writer and identified as a lesbian,
[Cécile Daumas, ]
Tête à queue
", ''Libération'', 14 October 2008. Preciado announced in 2014 that he was
transitioning and, in January 2015, changed his first name to ''Paul''. Preciado dated French writer-director
Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes (; born 13 June 1969) is a French writer, novelist, and filmmaker. She is known for her work exploring gender, sexuality, and people who live in poverty or other marginalised conditions.
Work
Despentes' work is an inventory of ...
from 2005 to 2014.
''Testo Junkie'' (2008)
In 2008, the book ''Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era'', relating Preciado's experience on self-administering
testosterone
Testosterone is the primary sex hormone and anabolic steroid in males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of Male reproductive system, male reproductive tissues such as testes and prostate, as well as promoting secondar ...
, was published in Spain (as ''Testo yonqui'') and in France. The work was later translated into English in 2013.
Preciado prefaces the book, stating "This book is not a memoir" but "a body-essay". Preciado takes a topical pharmaceutical,
Testogel, as a homage to French writer
Guillaume Dustan
Guillaume Dustan (November 28, 1965, Paris – October 3, 2005) was an openly gay French writer. Dustan's 1998 novel, ''In My Room'', brought the author instant notoriety for his masterful use of autofiction and depiction of gay glamour and ...
, a close gay friend who contracted
HIV
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...
and died of an accidental overdose of a medication he was taking.
Preciado investigates the politicization of the body by what he terms "pharmacopornographic capitalism".
Preciado described the act of taking testosterone as both political and performance, aiming to undo a notion of gender encoded in one's own body by a system of sexuality and contraception.
In the work, Preciado describes and analyses the changes provoked by the testosterone from the point of view of the relationship with Virginie Despentes (referred to as "VD" in the book). ''Testo Junkie'' also deals with the political aspect of other drugs that transform the body, such as
birth control
Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...
,
Viagra
Sildenafil, sold under the brand name Viagra, among others, is a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension. It is unclear if it is effective for treating sexual dysfunction in women. It is taken by ...
,
drugs used in doping,
Prozac
Fluoxetine, sold under the brand names Prozac and Sarafem, among others, is an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class. It is used for the treatment of major depressive disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorde ...
, and
estrogen
Estrogen or oestrogen is a category of sex hormone responsible for the development and regulation of the female reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics. There are three major endogenous estrogens that have estrogenic hormonal acti ...
.
According to Preciado, all sexual bodies become "intelligible" according to a common "pharmacopornographic technology". There is no such thing as gender without technology. Technology is understood in large sense, from writing technologies, to bio-chemical and image production.
''Can the Monster Speak?''
On 17 November 2019, Preciado gave a speech before the École de la Cause Freudienne (School of the Freudian Cause)—a society of
Lacanian psychoanalysts—in which he described his life as a trans man and challenged the precepts of psychoanalysis. He only managed to read a quarter of his prepared speech before being
booed
Booing is an act of publicly showing displeasure for someone or something, such as an entertainer or an athlete, by loudly yelling "Boo!" and sustaining the "oo" sound by holding it out. People may also make hand signs such as the thumbs down sig ...
off the stage. The complete text of the speech was later published as a small book.
In the complete text of the speech, Preciado considered himself as an object of the audience's
medical gaze, likening himself to Red Peter—a character in the
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
short story "
A Report to an Academy
"A Report to an Academy" (German: "Ein Bericht für eine Akademie") is a short story by Franz Kafka, written and published in 1917. In the story, an ape named Red Peter, who has learned to behave like a human, presents to an academy the story of ho ...
" who begins life as an ape, learns human speech, and gives an account of himself at a scientific conference—and
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster or Frankenstein's creature, often referred to as simply "Frankenstein", is a fictional character who first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus''. Shelley's title thus compares ...
. Preciado claimed that the practice and concepts of psychoanalysis (and its pathologization of transgender people) are not based in scientific objectivity, but instead reflect the
heteronormative
Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation. It assumes the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two distinct, opposite genders) and that sexual and marital relations are most f ...
worldview of the white men who founded and practice the discipline. In the second half of the text, Preciado made three observations. He claimed that the binary view of sex and gender (men and women) informing psychoanalysis is not an intrinsic property of reality, but is simply a current historical view which was preceded by earlier
paradigm
In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field.
Etymology
''Paradigm'' comes f ...
s. Preciado cited
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος, Hippokrátēs ho Kôios; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of ...
,
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be one of ...
and
Vesalius
Andreas Vesalius (Latinized from Andries van Wezel) () was a 16th-century anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, ''De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem'' (''On the fabric of the human body'' '' ...
to claim the existence of a previous "one-sex" model of humanity in which men and women existed on a continuum, with each being simply the superior and the inferior instances of organisms in the same one species. Second, Preciado noted that psychology and medicine invented vocabulary throughout the twentieth century (e.g. transexual,
intersex
Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical bina ...
) to describe exceptions to the notion of the gender binary, and also to pathologize them while preserving the disciplines' paradigmatic frameworks. Third, Preciado predicted the increased problematization of gender throughout the twenty-first century, and therefore called on the society to revise its psychoanalytic premises.
Publications
* Pornotopia: an essay on Playboy's architecture and biopolitics.'' New York, Zone Books. 2014. .
* ''
Testo Junkie: sex, drugs, and biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era.'' The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. 2013.
["Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics"](_blank)
E-Flux.
* "The pharmaco-pornographic regime : sex, gender, and subjectivity in the age of punk capitalism" in Stryker, Susan, and Aren Z. Aizura. ''The Transgender Studies Reader'' 2. 2013.
* ''Manifiesto contrasexual (Countersexual Manifesto).'' 2002. – Inspired by the thesis of Michel Foucault.
*''An Apartment on Uranus.'' London, United Kingdom:
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent book publisher based in London, specialising in literary fiction and long-form essays.
History
Founded in 2014 by Jacques Testard, it focuses on ambitious, imaginative, and innovative writing, both in ...
; Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e)
Semiotext(e) is an independent publisher of critical theory, fiction, philosophy, art criticism, activist texts and non-fiction.
History
Founded in 1974, ''Semiotext(e)'' began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylv ...
. 2020.Tr. Charlotte Mandel.
Art and Curatorial
* ''La International Cuir''.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The ''Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía'' ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It ...
, Madrid, Spain. (curator)
* ''PRO-CHOICE'' at Fri Art.
Fribourg
, neighboring_municipalities= Düdingen, Givisiez, Granges-Paccot, Marly, Pierrafortscha, Sankt Ursen, Tafers, Villars-sur-Glâne
, twintowns = Rueil-Malmaison (France)
, website = www.ville-fribourg.ch
, Location of , Location of ()
() o ...
, Switzerland. Curated by Petunia, by invitation of Corinne Charpentier. (In show)
* ''La Pasión Según Carol Rama'' at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
“'La Pasión Según Carol Rama' at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona"
. Art Media Agency (AMA). 22 October 2014.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Preciado, Paul B.
1970 births
Living people
21st-century Spanish philosophers
People from Barcelona
Philosophers of sexuality
Princeton University alumni
Queer theorists
Spanish queer theorists
Spanish philosophers
The New School alumni
Academic staff of the University of Paris
Transgender male writers
Spanish transgender people
Spanish LGBT writers
Transgender academics
Transgender studies academics
Spanish feminists
Feminist writers
LGBT feminists
Male feminists
LGBT philosophers