View source for Dysphoria Mundi by Paul B Preciado

{{infobox1
|title=Dysphoria Mundi
|author=Paul B Preciado
|reviewer=Heather Magee
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary= A galvanising, eloquent and inclusive manifesto for change addressed to all those who experience dysphoria in our times.
|rating=4.5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=496
|publisher=Fitzcarraldo Editions
|date=March 2025
|isbn=978-1804271452
|website=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_B._Preciado
|cover=1804271454
|aznuk=1804271454
|aznus=1804271454
}}

''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' 

Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. 


Preciado enumerates through chapter titles the  different facets of society which are, as he says, ''out of joint'': democracy, surveillance, the border, sexual difference, the present, time, god, freedom, history, reproduction, pain and profit, the city, the body, home, birth, language and truth. These mostly abstract nouns could well have appeared in inverted commas, as Preciado interrogates each and every one, flattening them out onto a page and mapping their various uses and misuses throughout history. Preciado has a remarkable ability to find parallels between different moments in history, where the same patterns of control can be observed, but using different codes or techniques. From the repeated political (mis)management of pandemics to political coups shifting into the digital sphere, Preciado makes it clear that a fundamental epistemic shift is required to forcibly remove these patterns from the frontal lobe of History. 


Neologisms are rife within this lengthy volume, and the themes are bleak, but what else can we expect from an author who is trying to convey using language the dismal state of the world and how to combat our symptomatic condition? The available language will not suffice. Glimpses of hope arise in the instructive sections describing forms of resistance, especially in the final chapter: ''Letter to a New Activist''. Preciado expresses pride for this new generation, writing ''I am surprised that you are capable of such kindness in the midst of this war. If such tenderness is possible, then perhaps it is possible to make this paradigm shift''. 


Preciado interprets the swamp of our current position, tugging at weeds, unravelling reeds and swimming through murky waters to emerge breathing, resplendent in his survival and beckoning others to the glistening surface. The only way to break the surface, to resist and become visible, is to mutate and ''embrace the mutation intensely'', to ''change your body and your cognitive regime, desire differently, love what we have taught you to hate''. 


With every chapter ending in a funeral prayer, death is everywhere in this book. Luckily, life surges through Preciado's poetic and narrative voice like a bolt of lightning. His prose is lyrical and urgent, reconfiguring the pain of the present moment into a potent possibility for change. 

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