Paul B. Preciado: "I am much more realistic than the fascists"

Paul B. Preciado (Burgos, 1970) is, from Saturday to now, in the process of transition from philosopher to movie star. The premiere at the...

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Paul B. Preciado (Burgos, 1970)

is, from Saturday to now, in the process of transition from philosopher to movie star.

The premiere at the Berlinale of his film as a director, '

Orlando, ma biographie politique',

has turned the author of

'Contrasexual Manifesto

' (2002) or

'I am the monster that speaks to you'

(2020) in the man of the hour.

Or, more precisely, in the non-binary trans man (as defined) of the moment.

The film -which turns Virginia Woolf's novel into the narrative engine of a full, beautiful journey illuminated by his life and that of so many like him- coincides in time, intention and gesture with the approval of the Law Trans.

With that, and in her own words, with the birth of a new paradigm of the world and of the identity of which the norm in question is only a symptom.

What leads a philosopher to make a film? I had never mentioned it before.

Let's say that I am in another economy that has nothing to do with that of the show.

But one fine day they came looking for me to make a film about my life.

It scared me quite a bit.

It was like breaking into your grave directly.

I didn't like the normative idea of the biopic, much less the heroism of the man who comes out of the mud.

In the middle of a meeting with the producers, when I was going to say no, it occurred to me to propose an adaptation of '

Orlando

', by Virginia Woolf.

And she liked it.

I left the meeting with a signed contract.

I liked the idea that the project was impossible from the start: How to adapt a novel like that with the budget of a simple documentary? Turn Virginia Woolf into a banner of trans, she who is also the banner of feminism as an author from '

A Room of One's Own

Isn't that a provocation? I don't want her to be a flag at all.

We need narratives to know who we are.

My idea is that we can narrate ourselves in another way.

And I thought that narration could be done with Virginia Woolf.

How absurd it is that we need to kill her father and that deep down we want to sleep with her mother.

Well, based on this narrative, countless diagnoses of neurosis have been made.

And it is just that, a narrative. A film is not a book (it reaches more people) and it appeared just as the Trans Law was approved.

How do you think you can intervene in the debate on the norm? Yes, first you realize that books reach a lot of people but not everyone.

When we screened the film the other day in Berlin, I realized that there were people from all over the place: trans, children, grandmothers...

A kind of collective spirit of love and appreciation was created that was very nice.

And that, in effect, is only given by the cinema. And what about the intervention? The film is not there to intervene in this debate.

This debate is very narrow and is very closed in the spaces of political language.

It's already tiring.

Perhaps what the film achieves is to exploit the debate and take it to another place.

I am very supportive of the law and it seems perfect and wonderful that a person can self-determine their own gender status.

But it's a bit the same thing that happened with the homosexual marriage law.

We spent 30 years with that law, and in the end, who the hell cares about marriage.

For me the most radical and democratically interesting objective would be to eliminate the inscription of masculinity and femininity in all administrative documents,

That seems to me to be discrimination enshrined in the law.

No one would allow you to write Christian, Muslim or black on your ID, for example.

We insist on something that does not obey anything more than a regime of visual organization of the bodies.

This supposedly natural and immovable regime in which we live is nothing more than an invention of a visual system. In the official section there are three films with a trans theme... Yes, there are three with a trans theme and 250 with a binary theme.

We do not see the binary.

My film is not trans-themed, it is about a paradigm shift;

it's about overcoming this crazy binary and hetero regime we're in.

It cannot be that we define our own sexuality, our desire and our subjectivity with categories of pathologizing medicine from the end of the 19th century.

We live in a collective delusion.

My proposal as a philosopher is to think of another, more utopian and poetic horizon. Cinema speaks from the binary for the most part: analog and digital;

Shape and background;

narrative and experiential;

fiction and documentary... What would a non-binary cinema be like? Pasolini said that the only possible theater is theater that is not theater.

Well, perhaps the same formula should be applied to cinema: the only possible cinema is a cinema that is not cinema.

It's very weird, but that's what I've tried to do.

The thing I heard the most while making the film was the line, "Paul, that's not how things are done."

Yes, but how things are done is a machine that is running and always produces the same thing.

We are completely surrounded by images that appeal to us.

What is tiktok?

Reality or fiction?

Is it analog or digital?

It is everything and nothing at the same time.

An image of 'Orlando, ma biographie politique'. WORLD

At the same time that he talks about the fact that society is already in the process of overcoming the binary normative universe, we see that part of the social conversation is radicalizing and calling for an increasingly essentialist, more reactionary, more heteropatriarchal discourse than ever.

How do you explain this contradiction?

Are we overcoming something or are we reaffirming ourselves in that something? We are experiencing the most important paradigm shift that has occurred since the fifteenth century and in the face of this transformation there are several possibilities.

I am more interested in making a poetic invention carrying Virginia Woolf under my arm than in the Bible or Lacan.

It is important to choose with whom you give that change to another world.

And in the midst of all this there are some positions that cling to a ruin.

To hold on to the patriarchy is to hold on to something that is falling apart.

There is nothing left of that anymore.

Those who cling to ruin are much more into fiction than I am.

I am much more realistic than the fascists.

Because?

Because the border does not exist and cannot be closed.

Life is metamorphosis.

I am on the side of reality and nature.

I am the true naturalist, because life is transformation. Do you feel that the new generations have proved you right? My feeling is that for a long time he spoke to himself.

With my non-binary way of expressing myself, they would say, "Okay, but we don't understand you."

And, suddenly, children arrive, 'children' and adolescents who speak like me because they are the ones who are already living this new reality. You have used the term 'child' and few things seem to irritate so much.

Every time someone uses inclusive language in public, a real storm of fussing, mocking,

ironies, condescending gestures... And that's not counting the army of academics so furiously against... What explanation do you have for that reaction? I come from a feminist culture and many of the battles that are taking place now take me back to 1840. So They were the women who demonstrated in the public sphere and said that they wanted to write the reason for the reaction similar to that of the Academy now.

When I see the circus that is set up in relation to certain things, I think that the one who gives himself away the most is the one who feels most offended. Also on the left... Yes, there is also a left that is very binary, very essentialist and very normative.

Notice that we are always with left and right in the binary framework.