Feminism or Death

Book excerpt: The passionately argued, incendiary French feminist work that first defined “eco-feminism”—now available for the first time in English Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne surveyed women’s status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggle was not about equality but about life and death—for humans and the planet. In this wide-ranging manifesto, d’Eaubonne first proposed a politics of ecofeminism, the idea that the patriarchal system's claim over women's bodies and the natural world destroys both, and that feminism and environmentalism must bring about a new “mutation”—an overthrow of not just male power but the system of power itself. As d’Eaubonne prophesied, “the planet placed in the feminine will flourish for all.” Never before published in English, and translated here by French feminist scholar Ruth Hottell, this edition includes an introduction from scholars of ecology and feminism situating d’Eaubonne’s work within current feminist theory, environmental justice organizing, and anticolonial feminism.