Sexual margins: A study on an ethnography of "The State" and women sex workers in İstanbul

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the construction of sexual margins of “the state” as a specific relation between the ordering functions of “the state” and women sex workers. The main point in this study is how “the state” establishes itself as a masculine body in these margins. To achieve this goal, it compares the regulations, disciplinary mechanisms and various practices related to legal prostitution on the one hand and illegal prostitution on the other. By conceptualizing silence, space, and violence as analytical tools, a particular performance of “the state” is explored through margins in both sovereign and governmental terms simultaneously. In this context, while licensed and unlicensed women are continuously rendered exceptional subjects, the ways in which they are exiled to the margins of the state and of the public designate two different constructions of “the state’s” margins. The main differences in the construction of these margins lies in the stability of the former compared to the fluidity of the latter. The main point that this comparison reveals is the extent to which the letter of the law is instrumental in constituting not only the legal sexual woman worker as subject, but also how, through reference to these regulations, the illegal woman sex worker. However, in his latter case, regulations become extremely subject to individual wills, and therefore unstable, thereby constructing a space of arbitrariness that allows a form of sovereignty based on the constantly imminent exception.