Beatriz Preciado: Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (2008–) [ES, EN, BR-PT]

22 October 2014, dusan

“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 analysis of gender, Beatriz Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado’s diaristic account of her own use of testosterone every day for one year, and it’s impact on her body as well as her imagination.”

Spanish edition
Publisher Espasa Calpe, Madrid, 2008
ISBN 8467026936, 9788467026931
324 pages

English edition
Translated from the French by Bruce Benderson
Publisher The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2013
ISBN 1558618376, 9781558618374
427 pages

Reviews: Marcie Bianco (Lambda, 2013), Johanna Fateman (BookForum, 2013), Deborah Harris-Moore (Make, 2014), Karmele Mendoza Pérez (Nordic Journal of STS, 2015).
Commentary: McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2013).
Interview (Ricky Tucker, The Paris Review, 2013).
Wikipedia-FR

Publisher (ES)
Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (ES), (EN)

Testo Yonqui (Spanish, 2008, 3 MB, updated on 2019-6-6)
Testo Junkie (English, trans. Bruce Benderson, 2013, updated on 2019-6-6)
Testo Junkie (BR-Portuguese, trans. Maria Paula Gurgel Ribeiro with Verônica Daminelli Fernandes, 2018, added on 2019-6-6)

H.D.: Notes on Thought and Vision & The Wise Sappho (1919/1982)

10 September 2014, dusan

Notes on Thought and Vision by Imagist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) is an aphoristic meditation on how one works toward an ideal body-mind synthesis; a contemplation of the sources of imagination and the creative process; and a study of gender differences H.D. believed to be inherent in women’s and men’s consciousness. Here, too, is The Wise Sappho, a lyrical tribute to the great poet of Lesbos, for whom H.D. felt deep personal kinship.” (from the back cover)

With an Introduction by Albert Gelpi
Publisher City Light Books, San Francisco, 1982
ISBN 0872861414, 9780872861411
72 pages

Commentary (Matthew Kibble, English Literature in Transition, 1998)

PDF (16 MB, no OCR)
Typescript drafts of Notes in Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Two, Three, Four.

Julia Vaingurt: Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s (2013)

7 July 2014, dusan

“In postrevolutionary Russia, as the Soviet government was initiating a program of rapid industrialization, avant-garde artists declared their intent to serve the nascent state and to transform life in accordance with their aesthetic designs. In spite of their professed utilitarianism, however, most avant-gardists created works that can hardly be regarded as practical instruments of societal transformation. Exploring this paradox, Vaingurt claims that the artists’ investment of technology with aesthetics prevented their creations from being fully conscripted into the arsenal of political hegemony. The purposes of avant-garde technologies, she contends, are contemplative rather than constructive. Looking at Meyerhold’s theater, Tatlin’s and Khlebnikov’s architectural designs, Mayakovsky’s writings, and other works from the period, Vaingurt offers an innovative reading of an exceptionally complex moment in the formation of Soviet culture.”

Publisher Northwestern University Press, 2013
SRLT series
ISBN 0810128942, 9780810128941
322 pages
via Sorin

Review: Boris Dralyuk (NEP, 2013), Tim Harte (Slavic Review, 2014).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2022-11-12)

See also the science-fiction film Aelita, Queen of Mars, dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924, 111 min, based on Tolstoy’s novel.