The Global E-rotic Subject, the Ban, and the Prostitute-Free Zone: Sex Work and the Theory of Differential Exclusion

Abstract

In this paper I analyze questions of displacement and exclusion through the lens of sexual commerce and its regulation. Using three frames of analysis, including a historical reading of the figure of the prostitute in Western law and culture, an analysis of a model exclusionary zoning law, the ‘Prostitution-free Zone Ordinance’, and a reflection upon the changing position of sex workers within heavily mediated contemporary networks of global e-rotic commerce, I argue that the prostitute is an originary figure of exclusion relative to homo sacer, the masculine sacred outlaw, who is an originary figure of displacement. I bracket popular themes of agency, resistance, and performance to interrogate a disturbing reactionary trend: just as important strides have been made in constituting sex workers and performers as rights-bearing legal subjects and workers, we see a reconfiguration of sexual labor through globalization and technology that renders incomprehensible any traditional subject of labor and rights, and a resurgence of legal and regulatory strategies of total exclusion or banishment. I conclude by positing a theory of ‘differential exclusion’ to describe the positioning of similarly situated sex workers relative to constructions of legality. In contrast to the theory of differential inclusion, which argues that groups are organized differentially and hierarchically through the notion of biopower, according to the relative value of their labor at any given historical moment, the theory of differential exclusion focuses on those groups whose labor is disacknowledged entirely, and who are consequently organized relative to categories of criminality and to their exclusion as subjects of labor and biopower. The work emphasizes both the critical importance and the difficulty of conceiving novel discourses and strategies for achieving worker status and human rights for women and men working in all segments of the sex industry.