Françoise d'Eaubonne (; 12 March 1920 – 3 August 2005) was a
French author,
labour rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, the ...
activist,
environmentalist
Environmentalism is a broad Philosophy of life, philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of Green politics, g ...
, and
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
. Her 1974 book, ''Le Féminisme ou la Mort'', introduced the term
ecofeminism
Ecofeminism integrates feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her 1974 ...
. She co-founded the
Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire, a homosexual revolutionary alliance in Paris.
Life and career
Her mother was a teacher, a child of a
Carlist
Carlism (; ; ; ) is a Traditionalism (Spain), Traditionalist and Legitimist political movement in Spain aimed at establishing an alternative branch of the Bourbon dynasty, one descended from Infante Carlos María Isidro of Spain, Don Carlos, ...
revolutionary. Her father was an
anarcho-syndicalist and the secretary general of an insurance company. Both of her parents were members of the religious
Sillon movement.
When she was at the age of 16, the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
broke out. Later, she would express her feelings in this period of her life with the title "''Chienne de Jeunesse''".
A member of the
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party (, , PCF) is a Communism, communist list of political parties in France, party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its Member of the European Parliament, MEPs sit with The Left in the ...
from 1945-1957, in 1971, she co-founded the
Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR), a homosexual revolutionary movement.
Also that year, she signed the
Manifesto of the 343 declaring she had an abortion.
She is considered the founder of the ecological and social movement of ecofeminism. She created the Ecology-Feminism (Ecologie-Feminisme) Center in Paris in 1972. In 1974 she published her book ''Le féminisme ou la mort'' (Feminism or Death) where she first coined the term
ecofeminism
Ecofeminism integrates feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her 1974 ...
. In the book, she speaks of a special connection women share with nature and encourages women's environmental activism. She cites
toxic masculinity as the cause of population growth, pollution, and other destructive influences on the environment. Many scholars shared d'Eaubonne's view on women's inherent connection to nature. These scholars include
Sherry Ortner,
Rosemary Radford Ruether,
Susan Griffin, and
Carolyn Merchant.
Following her motto, "Not a day without a line", Françoise d'Eaubonne wrote more than 50 works, from ''Colonnes de l'âme'' (poetry, 1942) to ''L'Évangile de Véronique'' (essay, 2003). Her historical novel ''Comme un vol de gerfauts'' (1947) was translated into English as ''A Flight of Falcons'', and extracts from her essay ''Feminism or Death'' appeared in the 1974 anthology ''New French Feminisms''. She also wrote
science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
novels, like ''L'échiquier du temps'' and ''Rêve de feu'', ''Le sous-marin de l'espace''.
Bibliography
*Novels:
**''Le cœur de Watteau'', 1944
**''Comme un vol de gerfauts'', prix des lecteurs 1947
**''Indomptable Murcie'' 1949
**''Belle Humeur ou la Véridique Histoire de Mandrin'',1957
**''J'irai cracher sur vos tombes'', 1959 (after the film ''
I Spit on Your Grave'')
**''Les Tricheurs'', 1959 (after the film ''
Les Tricheurs'')
**''Jusqu'à la gauche'', 1963
**''Les Bergères de l'Apocalypse'', 1978
**''On vous appelait terroristes'', 1979
**''Je ne suis pas née pour mourir'', 1982
**''Terrorist's blues'', 1987
**''Floralies du désert'', 1995
*Biographies:
**''La vie passionnée d'Arthur Rimbaud'', 1957
**''La vie passionnée de Verlaine'', 1959
**''Une femme témoin de son siècle, Germaine de Staël'', 1966
**''La couronne de sable, vie d'Isabelle Eberhardt'', 1967
**''L'éventail de fer ou la vie de Qiu Jin'', 1977
**''Moi, Kristine, reine de Suède'', 1979
**''L'impératrice rouge : moi, Jiang King, veuve Mao'', 1981
**''L'Amazone Sombre : vie d'Antoinette Lix'', 1983
**''Louise Michel la Canaque'', 1985
**''Une femme nommée Castor'', 1986
**''Les scandaleuses'', 1990
**''L'évangile de Véronique'', 2000
*Essays:
**''Le complexe de Diane, érotisme ou féminisme'', 1951
**''Y a-t-il encore des hommes?'', 1964
**''Eros minoritaire'', 1970
**''Le féminisme ou la mort'', 1974
***''
Feminism or death
''Feminism or death'' () is a book of essays about ecofeminism by Françoise d'Eaubonne, Françoise d´Eaubonne. In it, d'Eaubonne first coined the term ''ecofeminism'' (''l'eco-féminisme''), which conceptualizes the apparent linkage between the ...
'', 2022
**''Les femmes avant le patriarcat'', 1976
**''Contre violence ou résistance à l'état'', 1978
**''Histoire de l'art et lutte des sexes'', 1978
**''Écologie, féminisme : révolution ou mutation ?'', 1978
**''S comme Sectes'', 1982
**''La femme russe'', 1988
**''Féminin et philosophie : une allergie historique'', 1997
**''La liseuse et la lyre'', 1997
**''Le sexocide des sorcières'', 1999
*Poems:
**''Colonnes de l'Ame'', 1942 (Columns of the Soul)
**''Rutten'', 1951
**''Neither place nor meter'', 1981
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eaubonne, Francoise D
1920 births
2005 deaths
20th-century anarchists
20th-century French novelists
20th-century French women
20th-century French women writers
Anarcho-communists
Ecofeminists
French abortion-rights activists
French anarchists
French anti-capitalists
French anti-fascists
French communists
French environmentalists
French feminist writers
French LGBTQ rights activists
French socialist feminists
French syndicalists
French women novelists
Left-libertarians
Left-libertarianism
Left-wing politics in France
LGBTQ socialism
Libertarian socialists
Marxist feminists
Signatories of the 1971 Manifesto of the 343
Syndicalists
Writers from Paris