Political coherence, community and critique: interview with Fatima Ouassak

"No más mentiras". Linocut on paper © Esmeralda Juárez, Taller Barrio Gráfico.

Interview • Marta Malo and Verónica Gago, with translation by Anouk Devillé • February 26, 2025 • Leer en castellano

Fastima Ouassak lives and organizes in Bagnolet, which is part of Seine-Saint-Denis, a working class banlieu on the outskirts of Paris that was the epicenter of the 2017 revolt against police violence. Most of her organizing takes place there, and she draws on these experiences as she thinks through politics.

In her book The Power of Mothers: For a new revolutionary subject, Ouassak focusses on a source of power political organizations have neglected: that of women. “For me it was crucial to examine how there is something very important at stake in the relationship mothers have with their children, something which can be mobilized strategically between the stamp pad mothers who copy what already exist, and those of us who are mothers who become dragons,” Ouassak said when we spoke. 

In her second book For a Pirate Ecology: We Will Be Free, Ouassak introduces ecology as a key tool of emancipation. “Today we’re facing two emergencies. There’s the emergency posed by white supremacy, fascism, the return of the far right, authoritarianism and imperialist wars,” said Ouassak. ”The second emergency is the climate, and only ecology can respond to both emergencies, which are intertwined.” 

With sharp critique, Ouassak suggests Western political ecology is mediocre and not up to the challenges presented by the emergencies she describes. That’s why she introduces the notion of pirate ecology, an ecology of liberation that is also decolonial.

These days she’s working on her third book, which is about social organization and the commons. 

In what follows, we return to an interview we did with Ouassak in late December 2024, picking up on some of the threads that we began to weave in our face-to-face meeting in May of last year near the Place de la République, near where demonstrations were taking place in Paris. This is the second part of our interview (read part one here), which was conducted in French and translated to Spanish, then English, and lightly edited for length and clarity.

Marta Malo and Verónica Gago: In The Power of Mothers, school appears as a space for involvement and as a site of political battles. Tell us a little more about that.

Fátima Ouassak: In France, there are people who are very committed to feminism, to the left and even to the radical left, but who, when they have children, develop a discourse opposed to the idea of sacrifice. 

These are people committed to social change, sometimes even to the idea of revolutionary transformation, but when it comes to choosing their children's school, if they live in Bagnolet, for example, they don't enroll their children in Bagnolet, but in Paris. The justification is that they don't want to “sacrifice their children.” To be clear, there are a lot of Black, Arab and Roma kids at that school, and they don't want their children to share their lives and upbringing with our children. 

This is one of the reasons feminists don't talk much about their role as mothers. If they did, I think they would be forced to politicize their decisions, or at least to explain them. Do I send my children to play soccer with the other kids in the neighborhood, or do I sign them up for capoeira or skiing? 

By asking these questions we position ourselves from the material conditions within which we exist, which is central to materialist feminism. 

On a general level, I can say I'm in favor of revolution. But when it comes to questions like where will you send your child to school, there is no longer any abstraction. The contradiction becomes clear: yes, I want to change the world, but not at home. In the end, through my choices, I promote the reproduction of established inequalities and social injustices.

This debate has yet to really take place in France, because it is a debate that’s painful, and it's one we must be able to engage in. It’s not something that is the sole responsibility of feminists, but it demonstrates the difference between political rhetoric and individual strategies. 

The aim of my questioning is not to make feminists feel guilty, but rather to raise the matter of collective strategies versus individual strategies. In France, when we talk about mothers, we tend to talk about them as individuals and discuss the relationship a mother has with her child. 

That, for me, is a strategic impasse. As an individual the mother seeks the happiness of her child, not that of all children, because we live in a society that promotes competition between children and between parents, and the idea that for my child to succeed, yours must fail. That is what we must break, we need to understand that it’s exactly the opposite: for my child to succeed, your children must also succeed. This shift is difficult, even within the Front de mères, because it goes against everything we are told and encouraged to do. 

MM and VG: Could you tell us a little more about the idea of the revolutionary subject that you develop in The Power of Mothers?

FO: Before I started writing The Power of Mothers I had the idea of a trilogy in my head. I had too much material, so I thought about writing three books: the first would be the subject, the second the verb and the last the complement. That's why the subtitle of The Power of Mothers is “for a revolutionary subject”.

Based on my political experience, the subject had to be women, because I struggle in community with women. In the book, I explain how, at a certain point, there was an issue with the cafeteria at my daughter's school, and I called a meeting of the families involved. I didn't call out for 'concerned women' to attend, but rather 'concerned families.' Not a single man showed up.

The specific reality in which I carry out my organizing, which is where my political commitment lies, is within a community of women. For me it is important to say that it is a community. Of course it isn’t free from relationships of domination, nor is it free from violence at times, but it is the community in which I feel most at home, from which I am able to become involved politically, in which I can mature, and within which I manage to think things through. Among women, and specifically mothers, we can not [only] think about the violence and oppression mothers face, but also about the power mothers have as protectors of childhood. 

When I say mothers I include not only those with biological children, but also women who take care of kids in their daily lives, whether they are their students, their nieces and nephews, the children of their neighbors, or others from their community. It is a reference to intergenerational care, which is to say, to women who want the best for the next generations.

MM and VG: Given your interest in transnational activism, what do you think are the most important aspects of internationalism in the present context of war? 

FO: I think there are two important aspects. When I talk about internationalism, I am referring first of all to Europe, which is a scale that is too often neglected because we associate Europe with neoliberalism, and we don't care to think beyond that. That’s a big tactical mistake. 

I think the opposite is true, that we ought to put effort into relations within Europe. What can we do between European countries? Recovering our strength within Europe would also allow us to broaden our internationalist perspective. 

The second aspect is primarily with regard to Europe's relationship with Africa. This type of internationalism is challenging, especially for people like me who come from Africa. It is very difficult to work with our countries of origin. I am Moroccan and I know there is an issue that I should not address in Morocco: that of Western Sahara [which is occupied by the Moroccan government]. 

The colonial question and the issue of Palestine are also difficult to talk about within our home countries. But because it is difficult doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, and the diasporas are a starting point. 

If we don't work with countries linked to Europe's colonial past, that is, with Morocco, Senegal, Mali, and Tunisia, there can be no internationalism. Internationalists in France love to link up with countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Chile... And they love it because it costs it nothing, nor does it require questioning anything. 

But working with Algeria or with the Congo is a huge challenge. No one wants to organize things in these countries, with activists there. We know there are activists like us there; but we don't even know who they are.