Killing off the Sex Worker: Ireland and the Politics of Recognition in Law Reform

This Paper offers a psychoanalytic reading of the rationalisation provided by the parliamentary committee for the (pending) adoption of a Swedish-style prostitution regime in Ireland. The committee concluded that a woman could not, in law or in principle, consent to sex work, a move which, I argue, amounts to a refusal to ‘recognise’ her and in psychoanalytic accounts, can be understood as an attempt to destroy her. While focusing on the attendant discourse of this committee and its role in the law reform process, I also locate the enquiry against a backdrop of the state’s historical response to ‘deviant’ female sexuality. The paper thus takes seriously the possibility that states can draw deeply from unconscious effects and, in Jungian terms, ‘cultural complexes’ whilst at the same time speaking in the language of rationality, due process and evidence. Hence, while claiming protective intent, the state may in fact be committing an act of violence against the female sex worker – one that serves several strategic, political and moral purposes.