Interview with Paul B. Preciado #393
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Orlando: A Biography
10 min read
Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel is the direct inspiration for Preciado's film 'Orlando: My Political Biography' - understanding Woolf's gender-fluid protagonist who lives for centuries and changes sex provides essential context for Preciado's philosophical and artistic project
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Judith Butler
14 min read
Preciado explicitly cites Butler as a key influence who taught him about 'the battle from within' and deconstructing coercive norms - Butler's foundational work on gender performativity directly shapes Preciado's theoretical framework
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Michel Foucault
17 min read
Preciado chose his name 'Paul' from one of Foucault's given names used when visiting gay clubs in prohibitionist Paris - Foucault's theories on power, sexuality, and identity are foundational to understanding Preciado's philosophical work on gender and queerness
Dear friends of Daily Philosophy,
I will keep this short, because my life is a bit hectic right now — next week is the last week of term, and after that we have exams, and there are all sorts of things to prepare and sort out until then. You will have noticed that I barely manage to publish these articles here every week, and that they get delayed by random numbers of days every time. But I hope that it will all be better after classes have ended next week. In times like these, I’m always reminded of what my grandmother used to say: “You’ll have enough time to relax after you’re dead.”
With this cheerful reminder of our dwindling time on Earth, let’s now welcome Dr Paul B. Preciado. I quote here a few lines from the relevant Wikipedia entry:
Paul B. Preciado is a Spanish writer, philosopher and curator whose work focuses on applied and theoretical topics relating to identity, gender, pornography, architecture and sexuality. In 2010, Preciado began a process of “slow transition” where he started taking testosterone to medically transition. From this point on he has publicly considered himself transgender as well as a feminist.
I’m very happy to be able to bring you this exclusive interview, which Dr Leonardo Caffo conducted with Dr Preciado. — Enjoy!
The interview took place in Rome at the Cinema Festival. I had met Paul B. Preciado near the Auditorium, and by all accounts, I should have addressed him as a director. This is where my first mistake lies. Paul was there to present, with his Italian publisher Fandango, his first film—a hybrid of autobiography and a celebration of the first truly queer thinker in Western history, Virginia Woolf. The film is titled Orlando: My Political Biography, and it contains much of Preciado the philosopher and writer. Preciado, who was once named Beatriz, often shares the fate of philosophers who begin to experiment with other genres: limited acceptance in philosophy departments, yet an aura in critical studies, fashion, design, contemporary art, and cinema comparable only to that of Pier Paolo Pasolini (who, similarly, was reviled by the literary intellectuals of his time). He has revolutionized gender studies, eloquently documented his own transition (from woman to man), explored the philosophy of pornography, and reinterpreted philosophy through the lens of non-patriarchal, cognitive pleasure. A few years ago, Gucci, under Alessandro Michele,
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