Movement II · Weeks 6–10
What Do I Know and Who Helps Me Know It?
Primitive Accumulation
and the Labor
of Knowledge
WEEK 6  ·  CRDM 790  ·  Spring 2027
Primary text: Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
Activity: Canon Audit
Instructor: Kirsti K. Cole
UDL COMPLIANT
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 · Movement II
Session Map

Today's Arc

📖 Primary Reading
  • Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch — selected chapters
  • Reading available on Perusall
  • Bring your annotations — we start from your questions
✏️ Pre-Class Writing
  • First-pass exam list: 10 texts, one sentence each
  • Perusall annotation: find one place Federici speaks to your field
  • Bring both — we'll use them in the Canon Audit
✦ Hands-On Activity
  • Canon Audit — mapping the demographic shape of inherited fields
  • Large paper or whiteboard
  • Each person identifies one suppressed text to argue for
⚠️ Note

If course meets Tuesday, Wellness Day (Feb 16) falls this week. Asynchronous version on Moodle — complete before next class.

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 · Pre-Class Writing
Before We Met

Pre-Class Writing Prompt

✏️ Task One — Begin Your Exam List
  • Make a first-pass list of 10 texts you are currently imagining on your comprehensive exam list.
  • Don't worry about getting it right — just get it on paper.
  • Include a one-sentence note about why each text belongs.
  • We will use this list in the Canon Audit today and at the Week 8 workshop.
✏️ Task Two — Perusall Annotation

Find one place in Federici that speaks specifically to your field. Write an annotation connecting her argument to a dynamic you recognize in your own research area. What does she reveal that your field has left unnamed?

Both tasks feed directly into today's Canon Audit. Bring them in whatever form you have them — rough is fine. The point is to start somewhere real.

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 · Guiding Questions
Into the Text

Questions to Bring

1
Federici argues the witch hunts were systematic disciplining of women's bodies at the dawn of capitalism — not superstition, but politics. What does that argument require you to revise about how you think about early modernity?
2
"Primitive accumulation" is usually about land and labor. Federici extends it to bodies and knowledge. Where do you see that extension in the fields you are inheriting?What has been "enclosed" in your discipline? What has been made to look like non-knowledge?
3
As you begin building your exam list: whose labor built your field? Whose names appear in the canon — and whose do not? What would it mean to build a list that actively redresses that?
4
How does Federici's materialism sit with the more discursive frameworks we've read so far — Mbembe, Brown? Are these frameworks in tension? In conversation? What does each miss about the other?
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CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 · Hands-On Activity
✦ Activity

Canon Audit

1
List the canon

On a large sheet: list 8–10 foundational texts in your primary field. The texts that appear in every syllabus, every lit review, every "you should have read this by now" conversation.

2
Annotate demographic positions

For each text: note the author's apparent demographic position (to the best of your knowledge). Mark texts that center Global South, feminist, queer, or disabled voices.

3
Group read the shape

As a cohort: What does the audit reveal? What is the demographic shape of the canon you've been handed? Where is it monolithic? Where are the surprises?

4
Name the missing text

Each person writes: One text currently missing from their field's standard canon that they want to argue belongs there. Be specific. Make the case.

5
Brief sharing round

Go around the room. Each person shares their missing text and makes their argument in 90 seconds. The group responds: Does this text belong? What does its absence reveal?

6
Carry forward

Save your audit and your missing text argument. Both feed directly into your Week 8 Exam List Workshop. This is the beginning of your list's intellectual rationale.

Step 1 of 6
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 · Discussion
Closing the Loop

Discussion & Synthesis

Where we are

You've mapped your field's canonical shape, named its absences, and begun locating Federici's argument inside your own research territory. What did the audit make visible that you hadn't articulated before?

The question Federici leaves us with

If the witch trials were about disciplining bodies at the birth of capitalism — whose bodies are being disciplined in your field right now? Whose knowledges are being made to look marginal?

Looking toward Week 8

Your exam list is not just a reading list — it is an argument about what your field is and where it needs to go. Today is the first draft of that argument.

Writing Seed

"The canon I've inherited assumes ___. One text I want to argue belongs there is ___, because ___."

Exit Prompt

One sentence: What has Federici made you see that you cannot unsee?

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 · Further Reading
If This Week Opened Something

Going Deeper

📖
Saidiya Hartman
"Venus in Two Acts"
On the archive, its silences, and humanistic imagination. Essential pairing with next week's Fisher/Derrida — she does what they theorize, beautifully.
📖
María Lugones
"Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System"
Extends Federici's analysis through a decolonial feminist lens — what Federici's Eurocentrism misses about colonial gender violence and its afterlives.
📖
Cedric Robinson
Black Marxism
The racial capitalism argument that runs alongside and sometimes against Federici — useful if your work touches race and political economy together.
All available through Library Reserve · No Perusall purchase required
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 6 → Week 7
Before You Leave

Looking Ahead

👻
Week 7 · Hauntology: What Haunts Your Field?

Primary reading: Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life (selected chapters) + Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (excerpts). Both on Perusall.

✏️
Required Before Week 7

Haunting reflection — ~1 page, informal. Identify one haunting in your field: something that keeps returning, that hasn't been dealt with, that the field seems to keep circling. Post to Moodle or bring to class. This is a required pre-class task.

◆
Milestone Building — Exam List Due Week 8

Your Draft Exam List with a one-paragraph rationale is due before Week 8. Use your Canon Audit notes from today as raw material. Start revising.

"The exam list is not an obstacle course. It is a portrait of your intellectual genealogy — the map of how you came to think the way you think."

CRDM 790 · Movement II · Week 6

Primitive Accumulation and the Labor of Knowledge

Whose labor built your field? Whose has been made to look like non-knowledge?

Reading: Federici, Caliban and the Witch (Perusall) Activity: Canon Audit

Session Map

📖 Primary Reading

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch — selected chapters. Reading on Perusall. Bring your annotations — we start from your questions.

✏️ Pre-Class Writing

First-pass exam list: 10 texts, one sentence each. Perusall annotation: find one place Federici speaks to your field. Bring both — they feed directly into the Canon Audit.

✦ Hands-On Activity

Canon Audit — mapping the demographic shape of inherited fields. Large paper or whiteboard. Each person identifies one suppressed text to argue for.

⚠️ Note

If course meets Tuesday, Wellness Day (Feb 16) falls this week. Asynchronous version on Moodle — complete before next class.

Reading Guide

Federici, Caliban and the Witch · Autonomedia 2004/2014
Assigned (Perusall)
  • Introduction — pp. 7–20
  • Chapter 2 ‘The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women’ — pp. 75–131
If This Week Opened Something
  • Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts” — on the archive’s silences and humanistic imagination
  • María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” — what Federici’s Eurocentrism misses
  • Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism — the racial capitalism argument that runs alongside Federici

Pre-Class Tasks

Task One — Begin Your Exam List
Make a first-pass list of 10 texts you are currently imagining on your comprehensive exam list. Include a one-sentence note about why each text belongs.

Don’t worry about getting it right — just get it on paper. We will use this list in the Canon Audit today and at the Week 8 workshop.

Task Two — Perusall Annotation
Find one place in Federici that speaks specifically to your field. Write an annotation connecting her argument to a dynamic you recognize in your own research area.

What does she reveal that your field has left unnamed? Be specific about mechanism, not just “this relates to power.”

Guiding Questions

1
Federici argues the witch hunts were systematic disciplining of women’s bodies at the dawn of capitalism — not superstition, but politics. What does that argument require you to revise about how you think about early modernity?
2
“Primitive accumulation” is usually about land and labor. Federici extends it to bodies and knowledge. Where do you see that extension in the fields you are inheriting?
What has been “enclosed” in your discipline? What has been made to look like non-knowledge?
3
As you begin building your exam list: whose labor built your field? Whose names appear in the canon — and whose do not? What would it mean to build a list that actively redresses that?
4
How does Federici’s materialism sit with the more discursive frameworks we’ve read so far — Mbembe, Brown? Are these frameworks in tension? In conversation? What does each miss about the other?

Activity: Canon Audit

Mapping the demographic shape of inherited fields
1
List the canon
On a large sheet: list 8–10 foundational texts in your primary field. The texts that appear in every syllabus, every lit review, every “you should have read this by now” conversation.
2
Annotate demographic positions
For each text: note the author’s apparent demographic position (to the best of your knowledge). Mark texts that center Global South, feminist, queer, or disabled voices.
3
Identify the suppressed text
Identify one text that should be in your field’s canon but isn’t — or one that is treated as marginal when it should be central. Be prepared to argue for why it belongs.
4
Full group synthesis
What patterns are we seeing across the cohort’s canons? What does the demographic shape of these fields reveal about what “knowledge” has meant in them? How does Federici explain what you found?

Discussion & Synthesis

You’ve mapped your field’s canonical shape, named its absences, and begun locating Federici’s argument inside your own research territory. What did the audit make visible that you hadn’t articulated before?
The question Federici leaves us with

If the witch trials were about disciplining bodies at the birth of capitalism — whose bodies are being disciplined in your field right now? Whose knowledges are being made to look marginal?

Looking toward Week 8

Your exam list is not just a reading list — it is an argument about what your field is and where it needs to go. Today is the first real draft of that argument.

Looking Ahead

Week 7 — Hauntology: What Haunts Your Field?
  • Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life — selected chapters (Perusall)
  • Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx — excerpts (Perusall)
Perusall for Week 7
  • Find Fisher’s most useful analytical concept. Write an annotation applying it to something in your research area — what does it let you see that you couldn’t before?
Required Before Week 7
Haunting reflection — ~1 page, informal

Identify one haunting in your field: something that keeps returning, that hasn’t been dealt with, that the field keeps circling without resolving. Post to Moodle or bring to class. You will present this — 3 minutes, no slides.

◆ Milestone 2 — Due Before Week 8
Draft Exam List

Use your Canon Audit notes from today as raw material. Start revising your list. The draft exam list with a one-paragraph rationale is due before Week 8 — worth 25% of final grade.