Testo Junkie Notes for a Psychoanalytic Forum

ABSTRACT

Starting with an autobiographical account of my own involvement within psychoanalytic practices, this paper opposes psychoanalysis to a new set of “somatopolitical” techniques of intervention. The paper studies psychoanalysis as a technology of the body, a verification apparatus, and a technology of government and asks how psychoanalysis can (or can’t) work as a critical technique of production of subjectivity within the neoliberal pharmacopornographic regime.

Acknowledgments

I thank Ann Pellegrini and Robert Campbell from the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and Muriel Dimen for organizing this panel. Very special thanks also to Carolyn Stack, Kirsten Lentz, and Jamieson Webster for their generous responses to my book.

Notes

¹ See Eliand (2014).

² See, for example, Zizek (2009), Badiou (2015), and Negri (2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul B. Preciado

Paul B. Preciado, Ph.D., is a philosopher, curator, and transgender activist. His first book, Manifeste Contra-sexuel(Balland, 2000) was acclaimed by French critics as “the red book of queer theory” and became a key reference for European queer and trans activism. He is the author of Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics (Feminist Press, 2013) and Pornotopia (Zone Books, 2014), for which he was awarded the Sade Price in France. He is currently Curator of Public Programs of Documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens).