A Queer evidence: sex Work and affective methodologies

Abstract

This article considers two books that combine photography with biographical accounts to document a home for elderly sex workers in Mexico City; La Casa Xochiquetzal. Juxtaposing biographical narrative with visual forms raises new questions for our investigations of sexual subjectivities and the interpretive practices we call upon to investigate them. This project asks; how do different forms of biographical documentation productively trouble our encounters with the aesthetic representations of sexuality? How does the corporeal presence of the subject complicate testimonies of their lives? This project responds by proposing a queer methodology that undoes what functions as evidence in order to valorize the affective as a mode of engaging alterity.