Paper short abstract:

Thinking beyond the dominant categories, this paper discusses the “politics of desire” and “politics of the value” brought by young Senegalese women engaged in different transactions involving sex and money, under the angle of “femininities de contestation” in the global age.

Paper long abstract:

This paper builds upon the ethnography I have conducted since 2002 within young Dakar women: "Night girls" according to dominant social stigma, "Night adventuress" [aventurières noctambules] as I prefer to call them. These young women engage the bars and nightclubs of Dakar through various types of transactions articulating money and sex, often in search of foreign partners. However, I consider these configurations less as means to cope with "basic needs" (the "survival sex") than in the prospect of the desires and specific lifestyles they contain and express: especially, longings for dépaysement through the participation in the "good life" and in the World Society. The Dakar by night is one of the most favored scene of expression for the "desires of Elsewhere" that are so widely shared throughout Senegalese youth. How needs and desires are embedded in the production of original "arts of existence" which are both ways of being-in-the-city and ways of being-in-the-world? In this perspective, I will discuss the dominant categories (mainly prostitution and transactional sex), showing that they remain unsatisfactory for interpreting social practices that are characterized by their lability. Finally, I will argue that they reveal the constitution of "femininities de contestation" in the global age.