1980 : The nature of the crisis

by | Updated on 17/06/2026 | Published on 04/05/1980 | Articles, Texts

The nature of the crisis

In 1980, issue 20 of Sorcières, les femmes vivents published 6 pages by Françoise. She summarizes her long work to flush out the root causes of our aberrations. The passage of time only strengthens her pen and, despite anthropological reminders that can sometimes be dated, she gets to the point in the last two dazzling pages.

““To attack Capital is only to attack the point of the weapon which wounds us and tears us apart; the handle of the weapon plunges into the mists of time, it is called patriarchy, it is called male civilization with a universal pattern (…) Maintaining the industrial age (…) means the end of the terrestrial world in thirty to fifty years. We cannot go beyond that age while maintaining a profit system. We cannot abolish this system of profit by preserving a society of classes, namely a need for power. We cannot abolish power by preserving the patriarchal and masculine world. C.Q.F.D. The future of the species is in our hands.”

Françoise d’Eaubonne

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1979 : On vous appelait terroristes

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1979 | 1974-1979 Ecologie/Féminisme, 2.1 Bibliographies, Historical essays

Yverdon, Kesselring, 389 pages.

A book started following the death of Ulrike Meinhof in prison, On vous appelait terroristes offers a partial biography, fictionalized and polyphonic, of the protagonists of the German Red Army Faction. Each chapter focuses on the experience that each of them has (at the death of Katrina, Ulrike Meinhof) about the movement, its creation and the first attacks. It is the fatal spiral of counter-violence that Françoise d’Eaubonne describes. She shows how these young people, militants close to non-violence at the beginning of the novel, gradually come to the conviction that armed violence is the only effective recourse left to them to fight against State crimes.

On vous appelait terroristes em is a denunciatory title: the “urban guerrillas” are not, according to d’Eaubonne, “terrorists”, but militants of “counter-violence”. (Aurore)

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1979 : Moi, Kristine, reine de Suède

by | Updated on 17/12/2025 | Published on 04/05/1979 | 1974-1979 Ecologie/Féminisme, 2.1 Bibliographies, Fictional biographies

Encre, collection Mémoire des Femmes, 273 pages (Reissue, original published under the title Je m’appelle Kristine, 1959).

Marguerite Yourcenar’s monumental work, Les mémoires d’Hadrien, inevitably comes to mind when reading Françoise’s novel. And it is not the transparent clues that she left that will invalidate this observation. One could think of a stylistic imitation, when it is necessary to see there what these two great authors shared: a real knowledge of the Greeks and the Latins.

Knowledge that Françoise puts at the service of her purpose which, always, will have been to say: Women ! Be proud to be! It is thanks to this statement that I will have quite naturally, from my childhood reading, been led to consider that an epic hero could just as well be a heroine.

With Kristine from Sweden, Françoise paints a historical figure that lives up to her intentions. Friend and correspondent of the greatest intellectual and scientific figures of her century, linchpin of the Treaty of Westaphalia, adventurous and combative, diplomat and peacemaker, Queen Kristine was unquestionably one of the most important figures in the Europe of her time. (Vincent)

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1978 : Feminismus und « Terror »

by | Updated on 09/06/2025 | Published on 04/05/1978 | 2.1 Bibliographies, German

Original title Contre-Violence ou la résistance à l’Etat, translation by Regina Weiss, München: Trikont Verlag, 1978, 149 pages

A publication which, for reasons of content and editing, seems as dubious as it is confusing, and must be viewed extremely critically. We will confine ourselves to three quotations.

Editor’s note: “Feminism and ‘terror’ is primarily a debate within the feminist movement. In terms of content, we do not have the same appreciation of the text. But we are all of the opinion that the issues addressed must find a space in the FRG, which is far from obvious since the literary bans”.

Translator’s note: “By agreement with the author, the first chapter of the French edition, “La guérilla urbaine”, and Appendix 1 of “Reunion des Dissidents” have not been translated. We have added the essay “Women, revolution and the workers’ movement”, the text on Rita Brown and, slightly shortened, a commentary on Peter Brückner’s book “Ulrike Meinhof und die deutschen Verhältnisse”.

Cover text Quote: “The text is complemented by a critical and supportive afterword by Evelyn Le Garrec, who explains why, in her view, feminist forms of underground militarist struggle, even for a politically critical feminist movement, are not defensible”. (Herbert Kapfer)

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1978 : Das Geheimnis des Mandelplaneten

by | Updated on 09/06/2025 | Published on 04/05/1978 | 2.1 Bibliographies, German

Original title Le satellite de l’amande, translation by Uli Aumüller, Rowohlt, coll. neue frau, 126 pages.

All the men have disappeared. That is to say: all the males. In this novel, where they reproduce by ectogenesis (a means of reproduction that allows them to do without men), women, after having brought life back to an Earth devastated by pollution, Capital and patriarchy, set off to explore a small strange planet far from our solar system. This voyage will contain many surprises for readers of this philosophical tale. “Passionate, imperious. In fresco and in relief” (Victoria Thérame). Le Satellite de l’Amande is the first part of a saga to be continued by Les Bergères de l’apocalypse; the third part of this trilogy, unpublished until recently, was published by Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque in November 2022. (Alain)

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1978 : le donne prima del patriarcato

by | Updated on 10/06/2025 | Published on 04/05/1978 | 2.1 Bibliographies, Italian

felina editrice, 1976, 246 pages

In this Italian version of Les Femmes avant le patriarcat, a note on the first page reads: “questo libro e diretto solo alle donne” (this book is for women only).

By creating ecofeminism, Françoise’s genius was not to bring a new concept: it was to connect us with an immemorial reality, that of the pre-patriarchal cultures of our geographical area, that the rationalism of the 15th century then the humanism of the Enlightenment will have tried to eradicate it in our Western culture, now at the forefront of dehumanization.

Vincent d’Eaubonne, in préface pour l’édition italienne, 2024

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