Pornotopia

An Essay on Playboy's Architecture and Biopolitics

Paul B. Preciado (Université de Paris VIII)

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English

Zone Books
02 January 2020

Social issues & processes; Ethical issues & debates; Gender studies: transsexuals & hermaphroditism; Sexual behaviour

Series: Zone Books

Design objects, bachelor pads, and multimedia rotating beds as expressions of the relationships among architecture, gender, and sexuality.

Published for the first time in 1953, Playboy became not only the first pornographic popular magazine in America, but also came to embody an entirely new lifestyle that took place in a series of utopian multimedia spaces, from the fictional Playboy's Penthouse of 1956 to the Playboy Mansion of 1959 and the Playboy Clubs of the 1960s. At the same time, the invention of the contraceptive pill offered access to a biochemical technique able to separate (hetero)sexuality and reproduction, troubling the traditional relationships between gender, sexuality, power, and space. In Pornotopia, Paul Preciado examines popular culture and pornographic spaces as sites of architectural production. Combining historical perspectives with insights from critical theory, gender studies, queer theory, porn studies, and the history of technology, and drawing from a range of primary transdisciplinary sourcestreatises on sexuality, medical and pharmaceutical handbooks, architecture journals, erotic magazines, building manuals, and novels-Preciado traces the strategic relationships among architecture, gender, and sexuality through popular sites related to the production and consumption of pornography: design objects, bachelor pads, and multimedia rotating beds. Largely relegated to the margins of traditional histories of architecture, these sites are not mere spaces but a series of overlapping systems of representation. They are understood here not as inherently or naturally sexual, nor as perverted or queer, but rather as biopolitical techniques for governing sexual reproduction and the production of gender in modernity.

By: Paul B. Preciado (Université de Paris VIII)
Imprint: Zone Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 424g
ISBN: 9781935408499
ISBN 10: 1935408496
Series: Zone Books
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 02 January 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Paul B. Preciado is a writer, philosopher, curator, and one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and sexual politics. He is the author of Pornotopia (Zone Books) for which he was awarded the Sade Prize in France, and other books. He lives in Paris and is Associated Philosopher to the Centre Pompidou.