Testo Junkie

For one year, Beatriz Preciado gave doses of testosterone to herself every day. She writes: “I don’t take testosterone to transform myself into a man but to betray what society has wanted to make of me…to feel a form of pleasure that is post-pornographic, to add a molecular prostheses to my low-tech transgendered identity.” On one level, this book is a diary of a transgression-Preciado’s record of the pharmaceutical use of herself as a lab rat. It recounts the defiant “misuse” of a product normally monitored under the strictest conditions by medical professionals. On another level, Testo Junkie is a penetrating investigation into human identity itself and how much of it is mediated, controlled, and, indeed, produced, by medical and pharmacologic pressures. Pulsing with ideas that come from Preciado’s unique perspectives on queer politics and theory, Testo Junkie develops into an analysis of the cultural significance of the human body in an eray that she refers to as “pharmaco-pornographic.”