Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

by Paul B. Preciado, Bruce Benderson (Translator)

Overview

What constitutes a "real" man or woman in the twenty-first century? Since birth control pills, erectile dysfunction remedies, and factory-made testosterone and estrogen were developed, biology is definitely no longer destiny.

In this penetrating analysis of gender, Paul B. Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity are formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado's diaristic account of his own use of testosterone every day for one year, and its mesmerizing impact on his body as well as his imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558618381
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	09/23/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Paul B. Preciado is one of today's leading thinkers in the study of gender and sexuality. He is currently Professor of Political History of the Body, Gender Theory, and History of Performance at the University Paris VIII. He received his PhD in the Theory of Architecture at Princeton University where he earned special distinction to which he was a research career. He earned a Master of Philosophy and Contemporary Theory of Gender in the New School for Social Research in New York, where he studied with Agnes Heller and Jacques Derrida.

Bruce Benderson is the translator of many authors from the French, including Virginie Despentes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pierre Guyotat, and, though it is quite far away from his usual subject matter, the autobiography of Céline Dion. He is also the author of several novels and works of nonfiction.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Your Death
2. THE PHARMACOPORNOGRAPHIC ERA
3. TESTOGEL
4. HISTORY OF TECHNOSEXUALITY
5. IN WHICH THE BODY OF VD BECOMES AN ELEMENT IN AN EXPERIMENTAL CONTEXT
6. TECHNOGENDER
7. BECOMING T
8. PHARMACOPOWER
9. TESTO-MANIA
10. PORNPOWER
11. JIMI AND ME
12. THE MICROPOLITICS OF GENDER IN THE PHARMACOPORNOGRAPHIC ERA:EXPERIMENTATION, VOLUNTARY INTOXICATION, MUTATION
13. ETERNAL LIFE

Editorial Reviews

10/15/2013
In this first English translation of her book, which was published in Spanish and then French in 2008, Preciado (political history of the body, gender theory, & history of performance, Université Paris VIII; Manifesto Contrasexual) deconstructs what it means to be masculine or feminine in today's society, given the wide availability of drugs and treatments for birth control, sexual dysfunction, low hormone levels, and gender dysphoria. She then analyzes the methods that the pharmaceutical and pornography industries use to market their products, playing to peoples' insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. Preciado does all this while documenting her own self-regulated daily treatments of testosterone, in a "kids, don't do this at home!"-type experiment as she seeks to measure the hormone's effects on her body and psyche. Part history, part sociological analysis, part commentary, and part diary, Preciado's book, ably translated by Benderson, is comprehensive and timely. VERDICT English-reading students of sociology, gender studies, or the pharmaceutical and pornography industries will enjoy this dizzying exploration of the relationships among individuals, corporations, and governments when it comes to gender expression, drug control and enforcement, and individual rights.—Mark Manivong, Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

Library Journal

08/26/2013
Insightful yet incomplete, French gender theorist Preciado categorizes our modern era as “pharmacopornographic”—“a biomolecular (pharmaco) and semiotic-technical (pornographic) government of sexual subjectivity.” According to the author, pharmaceuticals transform “our depression into Prozac, our masculinity into testosterone, our erection into Viagra, our fertility/sterility into the Pill,” while the sex industry “control the sexuality of those bodies codified as woman and cause the ejaculation of those bodies codified as men.” Part theory, part memoir, the book also chronicles the author’s experimental consumption of testosterone, which she took every day for a year. She reports feeling like an addict on “T,” and describes her increased sexual desire and other elements of the transmasculine journey, such as going to drag-king workshops. Unfortunately, Preciado doesn’t manage to tie her experiment into her theory of pharamacopornography, and her conclusions about that global phenomenon do not fulfill her smash-the-gender-binary call. Preciado frequently equates transgenderism and gender liberation with the availability of testosterone and the expression of masculinity in bodies that are assigned the gender “female” at birth. The book also nearly completely omits any mention of transgender women. Agent: Mercedes Casanovas, Casanovas & Lynch. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Testo Junkie is an arresting hybrid work: a philosophical treatise and a literary homage embedded in a sexually explicit drug diary addressed to a ghost. Preciado’s prose is psychedelic, hyperbolic maybe, but exciting, persuasive, and even consoling." —Johanna Fateman, Bookforum

“Testo Junkie is a wild ride. Preciado leaves the identity politics of taking T to others, and instead, in the tradition of William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, and Jean Genet, he conducts a wild textual experiment. The results are spectacular . . . The gendered body will never be the same again.” —Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer Art of Failure

“Paul B. Preciado’s brilliant book oscillates between high theory and the surging rush of testosterone. Flush with elegant theoretical formulations, lascivious sex narratives, and astute histories of gender, Testo Junkie is a key text to comprehend the deep interconnectedness of sex and drugs today.” —José Esteban Muñoz, author of Cruising Utopia

From the Publisher