The Secrets of Capital: A Workshop with Leopoldina Fortunati

About this event

Join us for a full-day workshop with Italian feminist Leopoldina Fortunati on the hidden social relations that sustain capitalist life.

In the 1981, Italian feminist Leopoldina Fortunati published The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital. She argues that, despite its marginalization and naturalization, reproductive work is central to the functioning of capitalism. This is the arcana (“secret” in Italian) of capital. As such, the home, family, and even “love” become central conduits – or a “secret laboratory” – for the production of capitalist value. Some have seen this feminist insight as a counter to Marx. They allege that, in focusing on the wage form, he left out the reproductive sphere. But Marx studied how value was produced under capitalism, noting that the home, nature, and other social relations were devalued. As Fortunati highlights, social relations under capitalism – including their gendered, racialized, ableist, and heteronormative valences – are arranged to serve capital.

Fortunati has paved the way for these views to become near commonsense in academia today. Marxist and anti-colonial feminists have long used and built on Fortunati’s insights to illuminate, for example, the role of: the (continued) criminalization of sex work, the expropriation of indigenous land and labour in settler-societies, and the expansion and exportation of clothing and food production, as well as cleaning and caring work, that fall unevenly on the backs of racialized workers domestically and internationally. While these examples can be studied from the angle of exploitation (the appropriation of surplus labour), Fortunati and those in her wake have made clear that we must also look at their ongoing relation with the reproductive sphere – that which seems to lie outside of formal production processes – to understand the nature of capital.

This workshop asks: what are the hidden social relations that are most pressing today, from where we sit, in 2026? And what is at stake in revealing these “secrets”? If revelation does not necessarily lead to change, is it still a worthwhile project? Why or why not? In conversation with Leopoldina Fortunati, panelists will discuss their own research on capital’s “secrets,” prompting collective reflection on the benefits and drawbacks of this methodology and its relation to social transformation.

Recommended reading:

• Fortunati, Leopoldina and Sara Farris “On the Arcana of Reproduction” Verso Books VIDEO INTERVIEW (March 2026)

• Fortunati, Leopoldina, “Mobile communication: From gender differences to value production theory” Mobile Media and Communication (2025)

• Fortunati, Leopoldina, Arcana of Reproduction (1981)

Event details

Date: Wednesday, April 22

Time: 9:45 AM to 4:00 PM

Location: Carleton University, Dunton Tower, DT2017

We welcome students, faculty, researchers, and community members interested in feminist theory, Marxism, political economy, reproduction, labour, and social transformation.

This event is sponsored by the Department of English, the Institute of Political Economy, the Élisabeth Bruyère school of Social Innovation at Saint Paul University, and the Joint Chair in Women's Studies at Carleton and the University of Ottawa.

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