Paris, Éditions tierce, 96 pages.
Contre-violence is an eclectic, fast-paced work combining poems, political texts, articles published in feminist magazines, open letters, newspaper collages, leaflets… In this essay, Françoise d’Eaubonne refuses to condemn the use of violence a priori on moral grounds, enabling her to consider the broad spectrum of violence and its consequences, without dogmatism.
She does not end up with a compromise position, true to herself, but pleads for mutual respect for tactics and strategic choices. Having experienced and put into action acts of counter-violence, and knowing the costs involved, she is driven here by an ethical concern for the use of violence. Favoring a counter-violence that does not attack the living, she is also vigilant about contained violence, so that this violence is never transformed into revenge, individual venting, enjoyment and, ultimately, the seizure of power; so that “women’s power becomes non-power”, always at the service of diversity and the multiple (Pauline).