Pornotopia: An Essay on Playboy's Architecture and Biopolitics

The English-language edition of Pornotopia (originally published in Spanish by Editorial Anagrama in 2010) is a strong addition to the growing body of critical literature on the role of Playboy, the lifestyle magazine founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953, in contemporary American culture. Complimenting such works as Elizabeth Fraterrigo's Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America and Carrie Pitzulo's Bachelors and Bunnies, Preciado (political history, Univ. of Paris 8; Testo Junkie) argues that Playboy and its creator had not only a sexual but also a broader bio-spatial agenda. Drawing on a background in the history of architecture, the author explores how Hefner rebelled against postwar suburban domesticity by creating a counter-domestic image organized around the urban, heterosexual bachelor. She argues that Playboy's imagined and actual spaces constructed a life of biological and technological mastery in which the male protagonist experienced pleasure through manipulating and mediating his environment—and the bodies (including his own) therein.