Trance.
The Working-Class Studies Association 2018 Conference starts this week. It is hosted by the Center for the Study of Inequalities, Social Justice, and Policy at Stony Brook University, New York, with the title “Class at the Border: Migration, Confinement, and (Im)mobility”. Program and other information here.
I am eager to participate in the conference and grateful for the financial support of Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). Here is the abstract for my paper, “Commodities in Transit: Restrained Circulation and Transnational Exploitation in Trance (2006)”:
Trance (Transe, 2006), directed by Portuguese filmmaker Teresa Villaverde, is a poetic and harrowing film that conveys the reality of human trafficking and prostitution. Its protagonist, Sonia, played by Ana Moreira, is a Russian girl who leaves a bleak life in search for a better future in western Europe. She is later kidnapped while working at a car dealer in Germany and dragged from country to country as a sex slave. Her last stop is in Portugal. Trance portrays Sonia’s restrained circulation and transnational exploitation using a contemplative style. Such circulation and exploitation contrasts with the abolition of passport control within the Schengen Area and the creation of the euro currency in most of the European Union (EU). The process of capitalist integration and neoliberal policies of the EU gave rise to a situation in which workers moving within its countries or migrating to them easily fall prey to labor exploitation that goes unpunished. Trance is a key work of cinematic art for understanding the recent social and economic changes after the disappearance of the Eastern Bloc and the expansion of the EU. Throughout the journey it describes from Russia to Portugal, landscape mutates, language changes, but the use and abuse of women as commodities remains the same.
