Testo Junkie bookcover

Testo Junkie

Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

Bruce Benderson 

(Translator)
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

This visionary book on gender and sexuality weaves together high theory and intimate memoir, with "spectacular" results--"and the gendered body will never be the same again" (Jack Halberstam).

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

PublisherFeminist Press
Publish DateSeptember 17, 2013
Pages429
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781558618374
Dimensions7.9 X 5.5 X 1.0 inches | 1.1 pounds

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.

Reviews

"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

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.sign up to affiliate program link
Become an affiliate