La fabrique press release dated June 22, 2023
La fabrique has released a statement on the recent dissolution of Les Soulèvements de la Terre.
At La fabrique, we've been publishing essays for 25 years, and we were surprised to learn that one of them, published over 3 years ago in 2020, was cited as a charge in the decree dissolving Les Soulèvements de la Terre.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline, written by Swedish geographer and academic Andreas Malm, translated into 8 languages, draws on the legacy of Martin Luther King and the suffragettes, and is a best-seller: if this book presented the slightest problem in terms of the law (and not Gérald Darmanin's obsessions), it would have been prosecuted. But it wasn't.
So this is a backhanded attack on the freedoms of expression, the press and publishing, and the laws that govern them.
This is not the first time that a book from our catalogue – one that was never the subject of any legal proceedings – has been mobilized for repressive purposes. This was the case during the Tarnac affair, when the entire text of L'insurrection qui vient (The Coming Uprising) was added to the file of an anti-terrorist prosecution as evidence against the perpetrators, resulting in a slap in the face for the authorities and a collective acquittal for the accused.
These are the new forms of censorship, violation of freedoms and intimidation that weigh down on publishing houses.
Les Soulèvements de la Terre generates a debate of general interest, and it's up to publishers and the press to keep it alive. This is the task we're tackling by working with them on a book project. What we do with water, land and energy in the coming years and decades is not a question that can be left to technocrats or an irresponsible minority. It's a democratic issue of social choice, and soon of survival. One day, we will all be soulèvements de la terre.
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