“Una mano aviesa”: de feministas abolicionistas, trabajadoras sexuales y violencias epistémicas en Argentina

Abstract

In June 2020, the Argentine Ministry of Development launched the National Registry of Popular Economy (ReNaTEP) which, among other categories, included sex workers and strippers. Sex workers’ organizations celebrated the possibility of registering and thus gaining access to the mono-tax and social security instruments, but a few hours after the launching and due to the pressure from abolitionist sectors, the registry was eliminated. This paper addresses the history of this elimination in terms of lack of recognition and under the conceptual lens of epistemic injustice and violence. To this end, the article addresses both the ways in which the sex workers’ movement produces knowledge, as well as the uproar caused, among abolitionist feminists and officials, by the incorporation of sex work in the ReNaTEP, which resulted in the denial of sex workers, their epistemic agency, their subjectivity and even their legitimacy as a social subject.