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

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.

Publisher: Feminist Press
Published: 09/17/2013
Pages: 432
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.50w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781558618374


Award: Lambda Literary Awards - Finalist


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/26/2013
Library Journal 10/15/2013 pg. 118

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.