PAUL B. PRECIADO:
AN APARTMENT ON URANUS

Author: Paul B. Preciado
Published by
Fitzcarraldo Editions
English
280 pages
13 × 19.5 cm
Softcover
ISBN 9781913097073

Price: 78 lei


Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system, a frozen giant named after a Greek deity. It is also the inspiration for Uranism, a concept coined by the writer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1864 to define the ‘third sex’ and the rights of those who ‘love differently’. Following in Ulrichs’s footsteps, Paul B. Preciado dreams of an apartment on Uranus where he can live, free of the modern power taxonomies of race, gender, class or disability. In this bold and transgressive book, Preciado recounts his transformation from Beatriz into Paul B., and examines other processes of political, cultural and sexual transition, reflecting on socio-political issues including the rise of neo-fascism in Europe, the criminalization of migrants, the harassment of trans children, the technological appropriation of the uterus, and the role artists and museums might play in the writing of a new social contract. A stepchild of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Preciado argues, with courage and conviction, for a planetary revolution of all living beings against the norm.

‘Like all of us, it turns out, Preciado was born on Uranus and dragged down to earth against his will. The language of that fall from grace won’t get us home, but at least Preciado helps us imagine what might.’
— Kevin Brazil, ArtReview

‘An Apartment on Uranus forces us to remember that our intimacies with ourselves and others, our bodies, even our pleasure – our love affairs – are not distinct from, or untouched by, the biopolitical worlds we exist in.’
— Bryony White, frieze

‘The writings thread together concepts around the liminal spaces of subjects ranging from language and gender to migration and cities in flux, using a markedly corporeal language that encourages an empathic reading.’
— ArtReview

‘Infinitely piercing perceptions on transit, the refugee crisis, the European financial crisis, border-crossings, neo-colonialism, the reassignment of gender identity and exile. An urgency besets these short texts afire with the voice of a ‘dissident of the sex-gender system’ who advocates that ‘the entire political space […] must begin to transition’. The world needs a trans-becoming and this is its prologue.’
— Anthony Hawley, frieze