Normative supports and capacities for emancipation: The example of prostitutes’ demands

Abstract

If the condition of prostitution manifests itself as one of the clearest instances of domination in our societies, the paths to emancipation offered to those who are its victims prove to be contradictory, ranging as they do from the disappearance of venal sexuality, considered as a practice that is intrinsically inadmissible, to its full-fledged recognition as a trade. In fact, the demands formulated by the movements of “sex workers” prove to be vulnerable in the face of the presumption of alienation, while the goal of abolishing the practice is open to the charge of paternalism, when it fails to meet with the approval of the prostitutes themselves. The article examines these rival paradigms for the emancipation of prostitutes. The issue of the social conditions which would render possible a questioning of the domination of these paradigms is central to the article’s argument. To do so, it examines the reflection on the process of subjectification we find in the writings of Foucault and Rancière, and it sketches out a number of possible analyzes drawing on the sociology of Bourdieu and that which was initiated by Boltanski.