Syllabus/content/session/mappingtheinvisible.md

What 

Workshop 

Timing

3 hours

Transversal connector

Power Makes Us Sick, Decolonizing Technology

Keywords: 

Care, Work, Value/s, Power Relations

Abstract

This workshop aims to collectively visualize the invisible work running within institutions, communities, families, spaces and groups; to analyze the material condition of invisibility of those activities; and, finally, to rethink what are the value and values that those activities bring to the whole context. Ps. The workshop can be done as it is, however it is warmly suggested to take a second collective moment in order to organize the workshop: RADICAL REDISTRIBUTION (link). 

Tools

Tables, Chairs, Pen, Post-it, 1 Printed map (1.MAP-01)(link)

Session tutorial

Step 1: Introduction

Ask the participant to introduce themselves and to speak about a workspace¹ they are part of (each one shouldn’t spend more than 3 minutes).

Step 2: Analyzing our daily work-spaces! (20 min.)

Split participants into groups of 3/4 people and ask each of them to choose a workspace they are part of. Ask each group to analyze together the selected workspaces by looking at the different jobs involved to maintain the workers in work and the spaces in place. Ask groups to list each job involved in the workspace on a post-it. Guide groups to think work when it is visible and direct and when not. For instance, ask questions such as: “which invisible works are involved (i.e. cleaners, software maintainers, cookers)?”; “which works are the best waged?”.

Step 3: Magical discoveries (40 min.)

Put several 1.MAP-01 (link) at the centre of the room and ask each group to report back what they have identified as jobs through positioning the post-it within the four areas of the map: visible, invisible, waged, unwaged. Guide a collective discussion on the results of each map which aim is to point out the whole aspects that are running behind visible tasks and activities. At the end take a photo of all the maps.

Step 4: Let’s read (30 min.)

Start a reading group of “Wages against Housework” Federici’s pamphlet changing the reader each paragraph (20 paragraph). Ask people to stop after each paragraph to verify if there are words that have to be explained. If yes, stop and collectively discuss them for not more than 5 minutes each.

Step 5: Rethinking the value of values (30 min.)

After the reading group, bring again the filled maps (link) at the centre of the room and say to participants that they have the possibility to move one post-its in one of the maps. Invite them to explain the reasons for their choice. For instance, why do they want a task to be more or less visible and more or less waged? Repeat this process until maps have no transformations to add for the whole group. Take a final photo of all transformed maps. 

Step 6: Conclusions (20 min.)

Ask participants how they feel about the workshop and to start a discussion into their institutions, communities, families, spaces and groups based on their first analysis. Send them the two photos of the maps.

Bibliography

• Iconoclasistas. ‘Manual of Collective Mapping. Critical Cartographic Resources forerritorial Processes of Collaborative Creation (2016) |  Mapeo Colectivo y Herramientas de Código Abierto’. Accessed 8 February 2020. https://www.academia.edu/28625755/Manual_of_Collective_Mapping.Critical_cartographic_resources_for_territorial_processes_of_collaborative_creation_2016.
• Federici, Silvia. Wages Against Housework. Falling Wall Press [for] the Power of Women Collective, 1975.
• Manual Labours. ‘The Building as Body’. Accessed 8 February 2020. https://www.manuallabours.co.uk/labour/commissions/the-building-as-a-body/.
• Skeggs, Bev. ‘Values beyond Value? Is Anything beyond the Logic of Capital?’ The British Journal of Sociology 65, no. 1 (2014): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12072.
• Mezzadri, Alessandra. ‘On the Value of Social Reproduction’, n.d., 9.
• Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. Penguin UK, 2019.
• Federici, Silvia. ‘Social Reproduction Theory’, n.d., 4.
• James, Selma. Sex, Race and Class, the Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011. PM Press, 2012.
• Weinbaum, Alys Eve. The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History. Duke University Press, 2019.
• Bezanson, Kate, and Meg Luxton. Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Challenges Neo-Liberalism. McGill-Queen’s Press - MQUP, 2006.

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1. workspace is intended as a place where the subject is involved in working task: office, cultural centre, social centre, home, and so on. ↩︎