Paul B. Preciado

Paul B. Preciado
Born	Beatriz Preciado (1970-09-11) 11 September 1970 Burgos, Castille and León, Spain
Occupation	Philosopher, writer
Language	Castilian
Subject	Sexuality, gender identity

Paul B. Preciado, (born Beatriz Preciado in 1970 in Burgos, Spain)^[1] is a contemporary writer, philosopher and curator whose work focuses on applied and theoretical topics relating to identity, gender, pornography, architecture and sexuality.^[2]

Preciado came to The New School in New York from Spain on a Fulbright scholarship to get an MA in Philosophy. Jacques Derrida and Agnes Heller became mentors to Preciado. In 1999, Derrida invited Preciado to teach a seminar in Paris on forgiveness and the gift during transformation. Later, he came back to the United States to complete his PhD in Philosophy and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University, writing a dissertation called, Pornotopía: Architecture and Sexuality in Playboy During the Cold War in 2010.^[3]

Preciado is currently professor of Political History of the Body, Gender Theory, and History of Performance at Université Paris VIII and is the director of the Independent Studies Program (PEI) of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA).^[4]

Since January 2013, Preciado has regularly contributed to French newspaper Libération′s website Liberation.fr, in a column having gender, sexuality, love and biopower as recurrent themes.^[5]

Known originally as a female writer and identified as a lesbian,^[6] Preciado announced in 2014 that he was transitioning^[5] and, in January 2015, changed his first name from Beatriz to Paul.^[7]Preciado dated French writer-director Virginie Despentes from 2005 to 2014.^[6][5][8]

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, was published in Spain (as Testo yonqui) and in France.^[9] The work was later translated into English in 2013.

Preciado takes a topical pharmaceutical, Testogel,^[10] as a homage to French writer Guillaume Dustan, a close gay friend who contracted AIDS and died of an accidental overdose of a medication he was taking.^[11] Preciado investigates the politicization of the body by what he terms "pharmacopornographic capitalism".^[12]

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.^[13]

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).^[14] Testo Junkie also deals with the political aspect of other drugs that transform the body, such as birth control, Viagra, drugs used in doping, Prozac, and estrogen.

According to Preciado, all sexual bodies become "intelligible" according to a common "pharmacopornographic technology". There is no such thing as gender without technology. Technology could be in forms of shirts, hats, pants, glasses, socks, shoes, make up, jewelry, gloves, etc.

Publications

• Pornotopia: an essay on Playboy's architecture and biopolitics. New York, Zone Books. 2014. OCLC 883391264.^[15]
• Testo Junkie: sex, drugs, and biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era. The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. 2013.^[8]
• "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. OCLC 824120014
• Manifiesto contrasexual (Countersexual Manifesto). 2002. – Inspired by the thesis of Michel Foucault.^[16] OCLC 745998182

Art and Curatorial

• La International Cuir. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain. (curator)
• PRO-CHOICE at Fri Art. Freiburg, Germany. Curated by Petunia, by invitation of Corinne Charpentier.^[17] (In show)
• La Pasión Según Carol Rama at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.^[18]

References