Studies literary and cinematic representations of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam to rethink claims about the 'truth' of sex work.
8th April 2026
Hardcover
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Summary
Studies literary and cinematic representations of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam to rethink claims about the 'truth' of sex work.
Description
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.
About the Author
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).
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8th April 2026
