Once upon a time, someone loved a sex worker

Abstract

Taking into account the recent studies of the so-called affective turn in relation to the ethical and political relevance of emotions in the public/private space, this paper,  based on the practices and imaginaries of sex workers, investigates how we can read affection and love within the framework of the cultural theory of emotions of the philosopher Sara Ahmed. In order to inscribe the author's conceptual framework in a specific context, we have selected from an ethnographic research some interviews with a female subject who offers sexual services in the city of Córdoba and has clients with some kind of disability. From the dialogue between philosophical and ethnographic conceptual frameworks, we will seek to analyze how our privileged interlocutor articulates, obturates and (re)narrates imaginaries of love. What is at stake when loving a sex worker? Can these subjects be not only objects of pleasure but also of love? Who are the objects of love for this sex worker? Sex/love is traversed by ideas and values about time and work. Our intention, in this sense, is not only to question the normative sex-affective bonds, but also the temporal frames that traverse them.