Les Reclusiennes 2026
July 15-18, 2026
Sainte-Foy-la-Grande
Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, France
https://www.reclusiennes.com/

Fight, Debate - from July 15 to 18, 2026

The Pre-Program

Workshops and conferences

Wednesday, July 15

Rebellious Spain, 1936-2026.

Did the Spanish Revolution of 1936 begin in Ste Foy?

Nicolas Eprendre, Philippe Pelletier: What are the links between Reclus, the Foyens and the Spanish Revolution?
César Huerta: what memory, what transmission, in the families of political refugees in Spain?
Myrtille Gonzalbo (The Gimenologists): historical work based on the memoirs of Antoine Gimenez, libertarian militiaman (" The Sons of the Night. Memories of the Spanish Civil War")
Ikuru Kuwajima, presentation of the exhibition: What are the links between Reclus, the Foyens, Dôme and the Spanish Revolution?

Moderator: Esmeralda Trave

Urban planning, mesology and social change
Ludovic Dubois
Anthony Loisel (Belgium)
Pierre Chabard (Lille)
Marc Sahraoui

Moderator: Pauline Couteau

2 p.m. Writing workshop led by Maryse Belloc

7pm, Rebellious aperitif with the Ché-dric trio, "Fight or debate. Tell me a word, I'll make you a song."

Performance: Fabien Cazaubon, The laughter of Dionysus , poetic declamation.

Thursday, July 16

Learning to debate, educating differently
Maryse Belloc: presentation of the writing workshop
Jean Luc Richelle: Fighting for a Utopia in Action: Bonaventure
Philippe Godard: a libertarian pedagogy with dropout students
Audrey Saboureau: What is debate? The practice of discussion workshops with democratic and philosophical aims

Moderator: Bernard Duteuil

Beaten? Not only that
Mathias Couturier: the law, consent, violence
Marie Chartron: Facing sexual violence, for a transformative justice (philosopher)
Lorelane Lemarie: French boxing / savate, fighting, rebuilding
Hélène Hernandez: Anarcha-feminism (Radio Libertaire)

Moderator: Danielle Sigot Mezuret

Show: Outdoor ring, Improvisation match with actors and audience participation based on contributions from the afternoon.
Anne Reinier, actress

Friday, July 17

Fighting fascism and xenophobia
Olivier Mannoni: Fighting fascism means taking it at its word
Philippe Diaz: The United States and the Trump regime

Moderator: Nicolas Eprendre

Race and racialism
Jeanne Vigouroux: Élisée Reclus and Paul Broca at Sainte Foy la Grande
Philippe Pelletier, Race and racialism in the 19th century
Christophe Brun, Elisée Reclus, anti-Semitism and the Dreyfus Affair

Moderator: Nicolas Eprendre

Literary aperitif : La Dissidence publishing house, Philippe Diaz

Cinema: The Path to Freedom , by Christophe Cordier, on how the memory of the anarchist Nestor Makhno inspires current struggles in Ukraine.

Discussion with director Christophe Cordier.

Saturday, July 18

Citizen mobilizations on major projects
Jean-Philippe Crabé: the Pau-Canfranc line
Mélanie Gaillard, the salmon factory project in the Médoc
Sébastien Navarro, uranium processing at Malvési

Local citizen mobilizations
Annick Stevens: citizen participation in Menil (Meuse)
Activists against the Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed rail line
Mega-project battery factory (Emme) in Parempuyre
With the participation of investigative journalist Kristen Falc'hon (Splann!)

Poetic synthesis

Closing show

Exhibitions

Ikuru Kuwajima: Élisée and Paul Reclus and Japan, research, photos,
Videos: screen + headphones
Gines Maldonado, cartoonist

Miscellaneous :

The routes of documentary in Caradoc : with the participation of students from CREADOC (master's degree in documentary filmmaking and writing from Angoulême).
The festival radio
Table stand of the ENA (Aquitaine School of Naturalists)
Table stand of Éditions la Dissidence

Summary

The battles we wish to evoke, past and future, are not those where the aim is to eliminate, humiliate, or subdue the adversary.
However, the struggles that interest us here do not fear confrontation, aware that the resistances they encounter do not dissipate on their own.
We will seek to make visible contemporary forms of resistance and how they are expressed through new modes of creation, expression, exchange and collective action.

TO FIGHT, TO DEBATE

Throughout history, groups of people, men and women, outraged by the fate imposed upon them, have mobilized to fight against what they perceive as injustice. Others organize themselves to imagine and work towards the societal project they envision...

As an anniversary, we can think of the German Peasants' War in 1525, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War 90 years ago... But also, the Paris Commune, already mentioned during the 2021 edition of the Reclusiennes, the Yellow Vests, revolutions, large or small, the mobilizations against one or another of the Grand Useless Projects that are flourishing here and there: NDDL, A69, Megabasins.... The concern is therefore not new, women and men are fighting.

At first glance, "fighting" might evoke military conflict, war, destruction... While certainly present in the current landscape, and without denying its importance, war will not be our subject. The battles we wish to discuss, past and future, are not those where the aim is to eliminate, humiliate, or subdue the adversary. However, the struggles that interest us here do not shy away from confrontation, aware that the resistance they encounter will not simply vanish.

That is why "fighting" goes hand in hand with "debating". This means that the women and men whose struggles we will be discussing during these Reclusiennes 2026 are organizing, associating, federating, informing themselves to inform, debating to convince... in short, they are fighting.

A look back through history is therefore relevant, a retrospective glance at what worked, or didn't. This helps us avoid repeating mistakes or, conversely, draw inspiration from successes in a particular place and time. Spain from 1936 to 1939, a civil war but also a social revolution, a great aspiration, a shattered momentum, is a pertinent subject for reflection. Similarly, Élisée Reclus, whose life was punctuated by the century of revolutions, how did he fight? What kind of fighter was he? Violent, non-violent...?

A romantic vision of the Revolution suggests the occurrence of a great uprising that sweeps everything away, paving the way for the construction of a new society. For Marxists, capitalism will collapse on its own; for others, a single decisive blow would suffice for the masses to follow the lead of a few active minorities. But as the song goes: "Party of the reds, party of the grays, our revolutions are betrayed." The revolutionaries of the late 19th century then realized that the great day doesn't arrive on its own, and that even if it did, if the people haven't previously reflected on the future, if they haven't used their imaginations to determine what to do, if they haven't prepared, organized, and trained themselves... the great day remains without a future. Or, to put it like Pierre Bance in one of the four theorems that construct the argument of his book La Grande fédération, démocratie directe et vie fédérale, “For lack of having reflected on the institutions of the society to come, the communalist revolution is doomed to failure. [1]” Faced with this observation, two lines of thought guided the action of the revolutionaries of the end of the 19th century, two lines to which we will add a third, times change.

1- Revolutionary syndicalism posits that it is at the heart of the factory, by taking control of the means of production, by modifying the relations of production and subjugation, and then by federating with other "liberated" factories, that the power to shape and act one's life will be restored to the people. Today, work and production remain the reality in which people find themselves, become involved, struggle or debate, and sometimes even thrive. But strategies have changed considerably, and by playing the game of reformism, from revolutionary, syndicalism has become managerial. The union informs, defends workers, sometimes mobilizes them, but is less and less at the heart of struggles and aspirations.

2- Very early on, education is identified as the essential and necessary prerequisite for any individual and collective awareness. Indeed, there is no point in stirring up revolt in crowds that are not prepared for it.

◦ To educate in order to make everyone aware of dominations, alienations, and the means of freeing themselves from them.

◦ To educate by nurturing imaginations, by disseminating and transmitting other ideas, that another world, another organization is possible and desirable, and that by joining forces, we can contribute to it.

• To educate by combating and denouncing the ideas of reaction and capitalism. To prepare for the fight against far-right ideas and rhetoric, against fascism itself. Today, this means informing against its media strategies (Bolloré) and technological strategies (manipulation of search engines, social networks, and AI). Against racism and racialism, through the critique of its pseudo-scientific origins (Broca, originally from Sainte-Foy-la-Grande), and its current conflations and manifestations.

3- The third area is the commons, the local, the Commune: inhabiting. Not in the sense of cohabiting, a theme explored by the Reclusiennes 2025, but in the sense of building local struggles. Concrete commitments that bring together actors who don't necessarily share the idea of ​​a global societal change, but who can evolve through shared experience. Cities and territories are places of life where intimate experiences are as numerous as the isolated individuals who live side by side without knowing each other. But when a territory's integrity is threatened by a development project, each of these intimate experiences reveals the "geo-administrative reality" of the territory, or rather, how the "inscription of power on the land" dispossesses it of what it thought was its own. Hence the uprisings, the revolts, as if in reaction to an unbearable aggression.

The topics are extremely diverse and affect everyone's daily life. Participation in societal choices regarding architecture and urban planning, the fight against femicide, the struggle against the conditions imposed on migrants and the most vulnerable, the rejection of the exploitation of fears that fuels eco-anxiety, the rejection of the recruitment of young people into militarism...

We will seek to make visible contemporary forms of resistance and how they are expressed through new modes of creation, expression, exchange and collective action.

The facts, all the facts, have been established for a long time, and new ones are published daily, piling up on the shelves of activist bookstores. Past and present pollution, nuclear and industrial risks, control of digital life and public space... Yet, nothing changes. While one might think that an informed public (but what public?) would constitute a force of indignation, it is rather despondency and resignation that prevail. Everything is readily available for everyone to see the ongoing disaster and impasse, but nothing happens except for a few sporadic tremors. These women of Reclus, who boldly proclaim their commitment to "fighting and debating," must also reflect on "why aren't we fighting? Why are we rising up so little?"

A growing sense of dispossession of our lives confronts us with the choice of abdication or struggle. Abdicate in the face of the onslaught of prefabricated arguments, provided by generative intelligences for the benefit of economic and state powers. Abdicate under the blows of ever more violent repression. Or struggle, "fight" by "debating" with all the treasures of our human humanity, informing, exchanging, inventing, imagining what the machine has not yet been able to sketch. Reflecting on the how of individual and local demands, reflecting on the forms of legal and illegal civil disobedience in the face of state violence... All of this compels us to rethink struggles in their complexity.

The expected contributions may address the following themes:

Rebellious Spain, 1936-2026
Urban planning, mesology and social change
Learning to debate
Educating differently: alternative schools
Women's Fighting
Fighting fascism and xenophobia
Editorial cartoons and censorship
Counter-offensive: taking complexity into account, thinking about the future
News about struggles and whistleblowers
Fighting for the community: major debates and grievance books

Scientific Committee

Pauline Couteau, philosopher, Political Science Paris
Bernard Duteuil, psychiatric nurse
Nicolas Épprendre, author, director, documentary filmmaker
Mathieu Freon, independent researcher - Natural resources and landscapes, construction and transmission
Alain Gigandet, Honorary Lecturer; Research Professor; History of Ancient Philosophy; University of Paris Est-Créteil
Béatrice Lochet, citizen
Philippe Pelletier, Professor Emeritus, University Lyon 2, UMR 5600 Environment, City, Society.
Marc Sahraoui, Socio-economist, Deputy Mayor of Sainte-Foy-La-Grande, Cœur de Bastide.
Danielle Sigot, Nurse, volunteer with Cœur de Bastide, Sainte Foy-La-Grande
Jeanne Vigouroux, citizen

(1) BANCE, Pierre. The Great Federation: Direct Democracy and Federal Life. Noir et Rouge Publishing. 2025. Page 29
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A look back...

Created in 2013 by residents of Sainte Foy la Grande, university researchers, association leaders and anarchist activists, the Reclusiennes take place in early July in the heart of the bastide of Sainte Foy la Grande in Gironde, the birthplace of the 19th century libertarian geographer.

After the theme of "Vote" for its first edition in 2013, then "Guardians of the Earth" in 2014, "Walking, Migrations and Travel" in 2015, "Water" was the theme for 2016, then "The Common Good" in 2017 for the 5th edition of the Reclusiennes.
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Elisée Reclus

Jacques Élisée Reclus was born on March 15, 1830, in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande (Gironde) and grew up in Aquitaine, where his father was a pastor. Fourteen of his siblings survived, including Élie (1827-1904), an ethnologist and anarchist, with whom he remained very close throughout his life. His father intended him to become a pastor and sent him to Prussia, to a college run by the Moravian Brethren, where he joined Élie. The two brothers ran away in 1844. Élisée continued his studies in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, then at the Protestant theological faculty in Montauban. But the two brothers ran away again and were expelled from the institution.

Élisée Reclus left for Berlin where he attended the lectures of the German geographer Carl Ritter, one of the founders of modern geography, who exerted a profound influence on him. Returning to France in the autumn of 1851, he and Élie were forced to leave the country after the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, due to their political views. Élisée Reclus traveled to London and then Ireland before arriving in Louisiana in 1853. He became a tutor in a family of planters of French origin, but could not bear the conditions of slavery and returned to sea. He landed in New Granada where he established a farm.

Through his writing, Élisée Reclus aspired to be a geographer outside of state institutions , to address everyone through a common language capable of defending a libertarian vision of the world, of making the surface of the globe visible to the imagination, and of suggesting its beauty through style. For Élisée Reclus, being a writer was first and foremost a way to make a living from geography outside the academic institutionalization of the discipline. For forty-five years, the bulk of his income came from royalties paid by the Hachette publishing house. There he published travelogues (1860-1874) and tourist guides (1860-1870), contributed to dictionaries (1864-1905), and, most importantly, produced his encyclopedic Nouvelle Géographie universelle, which provided him with a regular income from 1872 to 1905. Reclus was not, however, a proponent of intellectual property rights: plagiarism, borrowings, and unauthorized translations of his work contributed to the circulation of knowledge, with his anarchist-communist approval. In L'Évolution, la révolution et l'idéal anarchique (1898), the geographer argued that "the scholar has immense utility as a quarryman: he extracts the materials, but it is not he who uses them; it is up to the people, to all of humanity working together, to erect the edifice ."

He produced a vast body of literary and scientific work while continuing his political activities . His major works are *Man and the Earth* and *Universal Geography*. He is considered the greatest geographer of his time and a precursor of ecology, remarkably modern in his unconventional lifestyle. Reclus believed in the possibility of a just, universal society where every individual would be respected and would respect others, once humanity had rid itself of oppressors and those who hoard resources, including the State, the source of power and authority, and therefore of domination.

But what brings us closer to Élisée Reclus is the desire to decipher the world with honesty, not to mask, to the extent that we are aware of it, what we do not like.

Date
Jul 15, 2026 09:00 - Jul 18, 2026 23:59