| François Paraldi
Polysexuality
Edited by François Peraldi
"I met François
Peraldi, the special editor for "Polysexuality",
in Paris through Felix Guattari. At that time he was working
in France with adolescents in a psychiatric institution
and was a bit of a hippie. He moved to New York at about
the same time I did, and I asked him to edit this issue.
He was assisted by filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and painter
Denise Green, who were also part of the Semiotext(e) art
team. It took them two to three years to finish the issue.
In the meantime Francois moved to Montreal. He became a
professor at the university and he took a private practice
as a psychoanalyst from the Freudian School (Lacan). His
outlook also changed somewhat, and this is also inscribed
in the issue. "Polysexuality" was also announcing,
unaware, another dark threat that was going to affect deeply
the culture. Like many outstanding people, François
Peraldi died of AIDS in the 80s."
- Sylvère Lotringer
My
80s, Artforum |
Originally conceived
as a special Semiotext(e) issue on homosexuality
at the end of the 70s, “Polysexuality" quickly
evolved into a more complex and iconoclastic project whose
intent was to do away with recognized genders altogether,
considered far too limitative. The project landed somewhere
between humor, anarchy, science-fiction, utopia and apocalypse.
In the few years that it took to put it together, it also
evolved from a joyous schizo concept to a darker, neo-Lacanian
elaboration on the impossibility of sexuality. The tension
between the two, occasionally perceptible, is the theoretical
subtext of the issue. Upping the ante on gender distinctions, "Polysexuality" started
by blowing wide open all sexual classifications, inventing
unheard-of categories, regrouping singular features into
often original configurations, like Corporate Sex, Alimentary
Sex, Soft or Violent Sex, Discursive Sex, Self- Sex, Animal
Sex, Child Sex, Morbid Sex, or Sex of the Gaze. Mixing documents,
interviews, fiction, theory, poetry, psychiatry and anthropology, "Polysexuality" became
the encyclopedia sexualis of a continent that is still emerging.
What it displayed in all its forms could be called, broadly
speaking, the Sexuality of Capital. (Actually the issue being
rather hot, it was decided to cool it off somewhat by only
using “capitals” throughout the issue. It was
also the first issue for which we used the computer).
The "Polysexuality" issue was attacked in Congress for
its alleged advocation of animal sex. |
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| “Polysexuality” includes
texts, among many others, of William Burroughs, Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Paul Virilio, Felix Guarrari,
Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Klossowski, John Preston, Peter Wilson,
Roland Barthes, Guy Hocquenghem, Roger Caillois, Verlaine,
Sylvére Lotringer, Jean-François Lyotard, Paul
Verlaine, Paul Guyotat, and François Peraldi. |
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