Review of the book Pornotopia: An Essay on the Architecture and Biopolitics of Playboy

Abstract

Paul Preciado is currently one of the leading names in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Thus, the release of this edition of Pornotopia is of great value to those studying such themes. What is most intriguing here is how Preciado decided to focus on the question of architecture and how this dimension interacts with sexuality, biopolitics, and related issues. When speaking of Playboy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is not architecture — after all, what tends to draw more attention are the naked women. In this sense, the project has something of a Foucauldian approach, reminiscent of when Foucault turned to the physical structures of institutions, such as the panoptic prison model or the monastic cells. Preciado’s argument is that Playboy constitutes a greater part of the twentieth century’s imaginary, aesthetics, and sexuality than we might initially assume. The magazine operates as a kind of “third way,” a heterotopia, situated between the conservatism of white, suburban, 1950s America and the sexual and cultural revolutions that unfolded in the postwar era.