THEY LIED TO YOU ABOUT THE EUNUCHS - Odete

Softcover, Risograph printing. Outline. 2025. New Condition.

This book project introduces the history of eunuchism through auto-theory, historiography, historical fiction and poetry, exploring this identity in the ancient world and what kind of echoes can be heard in the present day. By overlapping various histories, and drawing the line between eunuchs in antiquity and contemporary gender discourse, Odete makes a case for a history of gender that hasn’t yet been written, asking what is the relevance of eunuchs to the history of art? And what does the study of the eunuch expose about the current world?

Odete (they/them) is the alias of Levi Gabriel Carvalho, a multidisciplinary artist who salivates across writing, music, theater, and visual arts, leaking historical research into everything they do. They claim to be a bastard daughter of Lucifer, a descendant of the medieval practice of satanic pacts to alter someone’s sexed body. They have been researching and working on building connections between “effeminate” histories, from Baroque castrati to 19th-century dandies. Their latest book was published by Outline and is called “They lied to you about the eunuchs”- turning theory into the stage for poetry. Their work can be found at odete.pt