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The Sleeping Hermaphrodite: Waking up from a Lethargic Confinement
What can a reclining marble sculpture, conceived through a myth in Greek antiquity, tell us today about the fluidity of our gender construction? What has been the role of aesthetic and historical canons in the construction of the female and male genders? Is ‘the sleeping Hermaphrodite’ really asleep? Or has she/he been induced to a long lethargic state, punished and confined by the history of gender normalization?
96 pages, Paperback
Published December 12, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 22, 2025
so, so happy i discovered paul b. preciado whose texts particularly moved me, including the following, which encapsulates pretty well how i feel towards athens.
'without a masculine or feminine face, without a fixed name and with an uncertain passport, i settled in athens: a getaway-city in between west and east, a city of crossroads. i arrived in greece hit with debt and austerity policies, confronted with managing the influx of thousands of migrants and refugees who were crossing the mediterranean shores to escape the postcolonial wars and poverty of the middle east. athens was a unique observatory for understanding the processes of the neoliberal destruction of europe, social control via debt economy, and reconstructing nation-states as phantom enclaves for restoring racial and patriarchal sovereignty in a context of worldwide war and financial globalisation. i felt as if athens were trembling like my voice, and i loved it as i had never loved any other city. i feel in love with its streets, its inhabitants, its language. athens became for me the school of metamorphoses.'
'without a masculine or feminine face, without a fixed name and with an uncertain passport, i settled in athens: a getaway-city in between west and east, a city of crossroads. i arrived in greece hit with debt and austerity policies, confronted with managing the influx of thousands of migrants and refugees who were crossing the mediterranean shores to escape the postcolonial wars and poverty of the middle east. athens was a unique observatory for understanding the processes of the neoliberal destruction of europe, social control via debt economy, and reconstructing nation-states as phantom enclaves for restoring racial and patriarchal sovereignty in a context of worldwide war and financial globalisation. i felt as if athens were trembling like my voice, and i loved it as i had never loved any other city. i feel in love with its streets, its inhabitants, its language. athens became for me the school of metamorphoses.'
August 23, 2025
loved the essays but it felt a bit repetitive at times? obv the book is about 1 specific theme but i think it might’ve been nice to have the myth of hermaphroditus explained once at the start instead of every time at the start of each essay
really really loved Paul B. Preciado’s essay
really really loved Paul B. Preciado’s essay
November 25, 2025
I really love this little book on Greek mythologies and gender.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews