Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film

— —

Leslie Barnes (Associate Professor of French Studies, The Australian National University)

Sex Work in Southeast Asia

Name: Sex Work in Southeast Asia
Price: 200 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9781399532884

Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film

Leslie Barnes (Associate Professor of French Studies, The Australian National University)

$200

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Edinburgh University Press
09 April 2026

Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Literary studies: post-colonial literature; Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers; Social issues & processes; Sexual behaviour

Series: New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonisation, Queerness

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.

By: Leslie Barnes (Associate Professor of French Studies The Australian National University)
Imprint: Edinburgh University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781399532884
ISBN 10: 139953288X
Series: New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonisation, Queerness
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 09 April 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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).

Reviews for Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film

A fascinating dive into the historical dimensions of sex industries in Việt Nam and Cambodia, opening new ground in looking at representations of sex workers within a powerful array of texts. Barnes engages with a unique archive of literature, film and scholarship that tests what we know about sex work and the panics and politics often underlying it. -- Lan Duong, University of Southern California