Can the Monster Speak?

Paul B. Preciado is the author of An Apartment on Uranus, Counter-Sexual Manifesto, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics and Pornotopia, and wrote and directed the film Orlando, My Political Biography. He is the Director of the Institute for Planetary Transition at LUMA Arles, France. He was born in Spain and lives in France.

‘Read here the words of a monster, brought to you unedited and without embellishment! Yes, it is true – the monster speaks! But he does not speak the language of castration and penis envy, nor is he fluent in lack and misrecognition. This monster speaks in his own words, and he does not speak as a subject, as an individual but rather as part of a constantly mutating “somatheque”. The monster announces the fall of the father, the end of Oedipus, the solidarity of the monsters. This short book is powerful, dangerous, important. Read it alone but share it with friends. Whisper its secrets and tell everyone its message –the monster of whom you speak, has left his cage.’—Jack Halberstam, author of Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Guide to Gender Variability