Can the monster speak?

Philosopher and one of the leading ideologues of queer theory, Paul B. Preciado was invited to speak in front of 3,500 psychoanalysts gathered at the Journées de L’École de La Cause Freudienne, in Paris, in the autumn of 2019. Drawing inspiration from Kafka’s text in which a monkey who has learned human language addresses an academy of scientists, Paul B. Preciado addresses an assembly of psychoanalysts as a trans man and a non-binary person, not only to denounce the structural violence that psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis inflict on people considered homosexual, trans, intersex or non-binary, but also to invite the psychoanalysis community to open up to the gender and sexual mutations that are taking place in contemporaneity. From the cage of “trans man”, diagnosed by psychoanalysis as “mentally ill” and “gender dysphoric”, he said: “I am the monster that speaks to you. The monster that you yourselves have constructed with your discourse and your clinical practices. I am the monster who gets up from the couch and takes the floor.”

Preciado’s biopolitical spectacle now leaves the book and enters the stage. The text becomes a collective monologue read in five voices, addressed not only to the psychoanalytic community but to each of us and our capacity to embrace change and imagine a new utopia. “There is a historical proximity of people who have been expelled from the public space and who have been pushed into the theatre space,” says Preciado.

Text and direction: Paul B. Preciado
With: Alex Silleras, Bambi, Víctor Viruta, Andy Díaz, Fabi Hernández
Stage artistic collaboration: Tanja Beyeler, Natalia Álvarez Simó
Artistic assistance: Alexandru Stanciu
Technical coordination: Bela Nagy
Production: Elena Martínez – ElenaArtesescenicas, in collaboration with Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Conde Duque
Presentation support: Mais França / Instituto Francês de Portugal
Team Conde Duque
Light design: Paco Ariza / Daniel Checa
Coordination: Gabi Belvedere
Registration: Conde Duque Gema Monja
Acknowledgements: Luis Luque, Cartola Ferrer, Jessica Velarde, Equipa CCC Conde Duque and Ayuntamiento de Madrid