Mobile Desire: Aesthetics, Sexuality and the `Lesbian' at Work

Abstract

In recent writings on post-industrial economies the idea of the commodification of sexuality is highly visible. Yet many of these analyses tend to overlook the important debates in sexuality studies which have questioned both essentialist and utopic readings of the commodification aesthetic. In this article, I draw on some of these insights to think through the commodification of sexuality at work, especially in regard to the `lesbian' at work. In particular I ask if post-industrial service work may be currently constitutive of a `lesbian postmodern'. In so doing I suggest that the commodification aesthetic may be read as involving the making of sexual subjects at work. But I also consider the ways in which the terms of recognition of the `lesbian' at work may deny claims towards particular forms of workplace capital through a definition of performances of sexuality at work in terms of categories of immanence. I suggest this raises problems for arguments which suggest workplace justice in regard to sexuality may be best achieved through a politics of recognition, since the terms of recognition or visibility at work may themselves not be neutral.

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