ABSTRACT
Explications of the pharmacopornographic regime often take off from a consideration of its ground in and development of Foucault’s concept of biopolitics as the series of strategies whereby human life processes are managed and controlled by authorities of power and knowledge. In Foucault’s disciplinary society institutions control and organise and direct the behaviour of human bodies via disciplinary mechanisms like the drill, the rota, the timetable and so on. In nominating a new developing strain of biopolitics as ‘pharmacopornographic’ Preciado is referring to the encouragement of proliferation of sexual desire, and the enabling of the enjoyment of pleasure and attainment of sexual goals and satisfaction via widespread transmission of pornography in media and the availability and dissemination of pharmaceutical products – in effect, sexual micro-prosthetics – like Viagra and the contraceptive pill.
