Sex Work in Southeast Asia

Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film

Leslie Barnes (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

256 Seiten

2025
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-3995-3288-4 (ISBN)

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Studies literary and cinematic representations of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam to rethink claims about the ‘truth’ of sex work.

Examining the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under global imperialism, this book explores the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogates the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate. Engaged with debates concerning the status of transactional sex, Leslie Barnes explores the symbolic force and concrete conditions of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam, considering how these debates and the figures they ensnare are mediated by fiction and creative nonfiction. The book’s scenes of ambivalence show how the aesthetic treatment of sex work stretches the paradigms we use to make sense not only of sex work, but also of art, the evidentiary status of testimony and the spectacles of pleasure and suffering. Contesting essentialism and authenticity, and working to suspend judgement, these scenes encourage a re-examination of what we think we know about sex work, how we know it and what we do with that knowledge.

Leslie Barnes is an Associate Professor of French Studies at the Australian National University. She is author of Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature (2014) and co-editor of The Cinema of Rithy Panh: Everything Has a Soul (2021).

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Imperialism, Ambivalence, Sex
1. ‘Why my story?’: Sex Work and Rithy Panh’s Cinematic Image
2. Survivors, Celebrities and Saviours in the Cambodian Rescue Industry
3. Of Markets and Mediocrity: Sex Tourism and Michel Houellebecq’s Neocolonial Antihero
4. Kiều Refracted: Sex Work and the Evolution of a Vietnamese Heroine
5. Vietnamese Brides: Marriage, Migration and the Body
Conclusion: Dispassionate Reading

Works Cited
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	10.12.2025
Reihe/Serie	New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonisation, Queerness
Zusatzinfo	9 black & white illustrations
Verlagsort	Edinburgh
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sexualität / Partnerschaft
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-3995-3288-X / 139953288X
ISBN-13	978-1-3995-3288-4 / 9781399532884
Zustand	Neuware