Paul B. Preciado’s Dwelling-in-Mutation: The Show of Monstrosity

Trans theorists have long identified with monstrosity: in her 1993 performance ‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix’, Susan Stryker defiantly claimed her affiliation with Mary Shelley’s Creature. Twenty-six years later, trans-feminist philosopher Paul B. Preciado similarly declared ‘I am the monster who speaks to you’ (2020b: 17). In Preciado’s writing monstrosity seems to require a constant negotiation and movement; above all, it involves an ambulatory and changeable body. Trans man Preciado has elaborated on dwelling between binary gender categories in his Testo Junkie (2008), in which he combines the experiences of his avatar B. P. with theoretical work on gender performativity. His An Apartment on Uranus (2019) explores real and imaginary events of geographical and linguistic displacement through which borders seem to become home. This essay retraces Preciado’s emphasis on dwelling on the threshold. It homes in on monstrosity as dwelling-in-mutation. The essay juxtaposes the claims of monstrosity of Stryker and Preciado and addresses trans-philosopher Jay Prosser’s study of the autobiographies of trans authors to ask: how may one remain in mutation, or indeed dwell-in-mutation? Preciado is threatened by ‘passing’ as a man: how may one make one’s monstrosity visible?