Tolerance, Pragmatism and the Affective Taxation of Sex Work

This Paper discusses the role that emotions play in political discourses and political agendas that display a new, and often controversial approach to the taxation of sex work. My analysis of these aspects focuses in particular on the Italian case. Here, historical and deeply-ingrained concerns about the ‘immorality’ of prostitution, and more recent calls for the criminalisation of the purchase of sexual services are challenged by the newly formulated need to be pragmatic about the ‘problem of prostitution’, and respond to it with tolerance and a logic of improved political and economic optimization. Sex workers, outcast and marginalised for decades, are now called upon to make a contribution towards the collective effort to fight the current economic crisis by paying income tax on their sex work-related earnings. An attempt is thus made to strip the ‘issue of prostitution’ of its moral connotations, and the public is encouraged to put to rest emotional responses that have historically been displayed towards it – including disgust, shame, and anger. Within this operation of emotional management, the ‘good citizens’ are asked to think along with a neoliberal governmentality which entails recasting the governing of activities such as prostitution as non-political and non-ideological problems that need technical solutions (Ong 2006). This new rational, functional, and efficiently un-emotional pragmatism is offered and presented as the solution to the dysfunctional and traditional ‘old’ logic of government which had been rendered unproductive and inefficient by the uncontrolled emotionality of its moral politics. Drawing on Wendy Brown’s (2006) work on tolerance and the regulation of aversion, the paper will explore these developments and focus in particular on the problematic notions of pragmatism and tolerance that emerge from the processes outlined above.