Paul Preciado's controversial 2019 lecture at the École de la
Cause Freudienne annual conference, published in a definitive
translation for the first time.
In November 2019, Paul Preciado was invited to speak in front of
3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne's annual
conference in Paris. Standing in front of the profession for whom he
is a "mentally ill person" suffering from "gender
dysphoria," Preciado draws inspiration in his lecture from
Kafka's "Report to an Academy," in which a monkey tells an
assembly of scientists that human subjectivity is a cage comparable
to one made of metal bars.
Speaking from his own "mutant" cage, Preciado does not so
much criticize the homophobia and transphobia of the founders of
psychoanalysis as demonstrate the discipline's complicity with the
ideology of sexual difference dating back to the colonial era--an
ideology which is today rendered obsolete by technological advances
allowing us to alter our bodies and procreate differently. Preciado
calls for a radical transformation of psychological and
psychoanalytic discourse and practices, arguing for a new
epistemology capable of allowing for a multiplicity of living bodies
without reducing the body to its sole heterosexual reproductive
capability, and without legitimizing hetero-patriarchal and colonial
violence.
Causing a veritable outcry among the assembly, Preciado was heckled
and booed and unable to finish. The lecture, filmed on smartphones,
was published online, where fragments were transcribed, translated,
and published with no regard for exactitude. With this volume, Can
the Monster Speak? is published in a definitive translation for
the first time.