Leslie Barnes
is Lecturer in French Studies at the Australian National University. She is the author of Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature (2014).
All essays by Leslie Barnes
What Lay In The Ashes: The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc by Ali Alizadeh
The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc blends fiction and nonfiction in its reconstruction of Jeanne’s life, not to offer a new conclusion about the warrior, but to urge us to view her otherwise than through the lens of her canonisation. The fictionalised exploration of Jeanne’s homosexuality may raise the ire of those who would consider themselves the guardians of a chaste legend; it is also essential to Alizadeh’s insistence on the maid’s humanity.
Playing the Part, Telling the Tale: Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work
In the end, Playing the Whore is a book is about language, and in particular the way we use it to construct sex work as a field of knowledge and limit the control sex workers have over their own lives. It is about identifying sex work, not as something driven by male desire, but by the sex worker’s needs for housing, nourishment, access to healthcare, and even holiday time.