Item Details

title

Dangerous Persuasions: Communicating Defiance in the Rhetoric of Queer Sex Workers

author

Larsen, Beau

abstract

This thesis investigates the rhetorical inventions of queer sex workers to theorize modern apprehensions surrounding the relationship between persuasion and harlotry. Sex work and queerness are scripted as unruly and dangerous persuasions that must be disposed of to maintain and propel modern civilized political life. Queer sex workers who perform cisheterosexuality for work are particularly marked for symbolizing a perverse, promiscuous and duplicitous kind of sociality that threatens the public/private divide and the modern imperative for transparent and authentic subjects. Studying sex work requires a structural analysis of the carceral continuum endemic to racial capitalism and should trouble the incorporative pathways offered by conditional inclusion. Building from cross-points between queer theory, rhetorical theory and sex worker studies, this thesis examines two films that publicize sex working ensembles that scheme, dream, plan and refuse the conditions and conventions of violence intrinsic to the arrangements of racial capitalism.

subject

Communication

Queer Theory

Racial Capitalism

Rhetoric

Sex Work

contributor

Von Burg, Alessandra (committee chair)

Atchison, Jarrod (committee member)

Reid-Brinkley, Shanara (committee member)

date

2021-06-03T08:36:09Z (accessioned)

2021-06-03T08:36:09Z (available)

2021 (issued)

degree

Communication (discipline)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/98814 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis