INTIMACY, TECHNOSCIENCE AND THE CITY : REGULATING “PROSTITUTION” IN DAKAR, 1946-2010 Branwyn Poleykett Abstract Senegal is one of the very few former French colonies that explicitly pursued the sanitary regulation of prostitution after independence; in Senegal, the legal status of sex work turns on a distinction between registered “avowed” prostitutes, and non-registered, unofficial prostitutes – the clandestines. Based on fifteen months ethnographic study in two clinics this thesis traces the changes that have taken place in the regulation of commercial intimacy in Dakar following the integration of an experimental regime at the state clinic and the creation of the identity “clandestine” by non-governmental organizations. Despite the enormous changes that have taken place over the course of the twentieth century, colonial sanitary regulation remains a governing “biopolitical paradigm” (Epstein, 2007), leaving its traces in the therapeutic, experimental, and affective lives of the clinics. In this thesis I examine how racial, gender, and class difference is produced in regulation through (1) the racial politics of colonial policy; (2) enactments of social and individual bodies at the Enda mobile clinic; (3) how difference is written into the onto-epistemologies of molecular biology; (4) how attempts to understand and accommodate difference are attempted through bioethics and the material effects of ethical practice. I do this by paying close attention to the ethnomethods of the professionals I study and to the local historical geographies of clinical practice. Throughout this thesis I think about the feminist biopolitics that might be capable of responding to and theorizing the surprising social life of the clinics. Keywords: Dakar, Difference, “Prostitution”, Clinical Ethnography, Irony, Feminist Cultural Studies of Science - 1 - Declaration I, Branwyn Poleykett, hereby state that this thesis is my own work and that all sources used are made explicit in the text. - 2 - Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................................. - 7 - GLOSSARY OF TERMS ................................................................................................................................. - 7 - CHAPTER ONE: INTIMACY, TECHNOSCIENCE AND THE CITY ...................................................................... - 9 - Feminist cultural studies of science: making difference in and with cultures of technoscience ............ - 12 - Dakar ................................................................................................................................................... - 15 - Healthcare in Dakar ........................................................................................................................ - 19 - The regulation of “prostitution” in Dakar: a short history ................................................................... - 20 - Postcolonial regulation .................................................................................................................... - 23 - The Institute of Social Hygiene ........................................................................................................ - 23 - The discovery of HIV-2 .................................................................................................................... - 26 - “Everybody wants to be on our team” The NGOs and the Clandestines ........................................... - 27 - Research questions .............................................................................................................................. - 31 - Structure of the thesis .......................................................................................................................... - 32 - Origins of the research......................................................................................................................... - 34 - Beginnings ....................................................................................................................................... - 35 - Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... - 39 - CHAPTER TWO: THE SPACES IN-BETWEEN ............................................................................................... - 41 - Making difference: being feminist in STS ............................................................................................ - 41 - Biopower and biopolitics ..................................................................................................................... - 43 - Care, power and the affective economies of intervention ................................................................ - 46 - Geographies of Science ........................................................................................................................ - 49 - Blended sites .................................................................................................................................... - 49 - Moral Spaces .................................................................................................................................... - 50 - “Global” science and postcolonial science studies ........................................................................... - 51 - Experimentality: ethnographies of clinical trials in the majority world ............................................ - 53 - The (bio)ethics of regulation ................................................................................................................ - 54 - Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... - 56 - CHAPTER THREE: THINKING THE SUBJECT: METHODOLOGIES, AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHIES, AND ONTO- EPISTEMOLOGIES ..................................................................................................................................... - 59 - Defining the field: writing clinical culture ....................................................................................... - 62 - The Institute of Social Hygiene ........................................................................................................ - 64 - - 3 - The Enda mobile clinic .................................................................................................................... - 65 - Defining the subject: talking and not talking to sex workers ................................................................ - 67 - Positionality and difference ............................................................................................................ - 71 - Ethnomethods and the fieldworkers: ta[l]king care of bodies .................................................... - 73 - Conclusion: Making-up “prostitutes”: historical ontology as method .................................................. - 75 - CHAPTER FOUR : COLONIAL BUREAUCRATS AND NGO ETHNOGRAPHERS: TWO RESPONSES TO THE “WOMAN NAMING CRISIS” ....................................................................................................................... - 78 - Regulating Prostitution ........................................................................................................................ - 79 - Counting Prostitutes in the Colonial City ....................................................................................... - 81 - Colonial regulation in Dakar ........................................................................................................... - 82 - “Everyone is exploiting everyone”: “Prostitution”, Mbaraan and Modern Affects ........................... - 83 - We’re feeling our way through: skilling the mobile clinic .................................................................... - 88 - Typologies of sex work: para-ethnographic fields ................................................................................. - 90 - “If there’s one thing I know how to do”: knowing prostitutes, soft-skills, and late modern expertise ......................................................................................................................................... - 93 - Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... - 95 - CHAPTER FIVE: THE STRATÉGIE AVANCÉE: TECHNOLOGIES OF GENDER AND THE MOBILE CLINIC ........ - 97 - Becoming formal with the NGOs ........................................................................................................ - 99 - The pre-history of the mobile clinic ................................................................................................. - 99 - The Cartographie .......................................................................................................................... - 101 - Controversial Beginnings ............................................................................................................... - 104 - Enacting the Clandestine ................................................................................................................... - 107 - Technologies of gender and the clandestine in the clinic................................................................. - 111 - Fluidity, Becoming and Identity: Making the clinic the “perfect” tool for the job ........................