Keynote
A revolutionary book tracing the collapse of the paradigms that have organized the world for centuries
Book Title
Dysphoria Mundi
Subtitle
A Diary of Planetary Transition
Cover Image
- “How lucky we are to have Paul Preciado as companion and interpreter of all we’ve just been through, with a global pandemic—luckier still is the gift of his revolutionary optimism, which runs through his thorough, gritty analysis of our current predicament.”—Maggie Nelson
Body
In Dysphoria Mundi, Paul B. Preciado, best known for his 2013 cult classic Testo Junkie, has written a mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry, and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility. Rooted in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking account of the societal convulsions that have ensued, Preciado tries to make sense of our times from within the swirl of a revolutionary present moment.
The central thesis of this monumental work is that dysphoria, to be understood properly, should not be seen as a mental illness but rather as the condition that defines our times. Dysphoria is an abyss that separates a patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist order hurtling toward its end from a new way of being that, until now, has been seen as unproductive and abnormal but is in fact the way out of our current predicament.
With echoes of visionaries such as William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker, Preciado’s theoretical writing is propelled by lyric power while providing us with a critical toolbox full of new concepts that can guide our thinking and our actions: transition, cognitive emancipation, denormalization, disidentification, “electronic heroin,” digital coups, necro-kitsch. Dysphoria Mundi is Preciado’s most accessible and significant work to date, in which he makes sense of a world in ruins around us and maps a joyous, radical way forward.
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About the Author
Credit: Clara Deshayes
Praise
- “Paul Preciado’s singular genius is for writing vividly within the immediacy of everyday life, and then also unraveling from there the deeper historical forces that shape those moments. Preciado has that rare ability to lead the reader through familiar situations to unexpected conceptual insight. An essential thinker for the contemporary world.”—McKenzie Wark
- “This monumental work brings the commitments of the bibliophile to bear on a time and a world now irreversibly out of joint. Drawing on theories of language, mind, technology, immunology to retell a story of this world, Preciado’s work more firmly shatters the binaries responsible for the destruction of love and futurity.”—Judith Butler
“Paul Preciado’s Dysphoria Mundi is a long and often frustrating or disorienting read. But within it lies a timely and powerful book, ready to be excavated by a reader with sufficient patience, about dysphoria, the pandemic, and the transformative and liberatory power of challenges to our individual and collective sense of safety and coherence.”—Quill R Kukla, The Washington Post
“In Dysphoria Mundi, Preciado begins the urgent task of theorizing how struggles for those better futures might shift and adapt to make use of our polycrisis.”—Mira Mason, The Columbia Review
