Interview with Marion Pillas from La Déferlante: an online space to embrace the feminist revolution

In a media landscape often dominated by mainstream narratives, La Déferlante stands out as a bold, independent feminist magazine committed to examining the intersections of gender, race, and class. Launched in 2019, the publication quickly became a vital space for in-depth reflection, critical debate, and artistic expression around feminist and anti-racist issues. In this interview, Marion Pillas, co-editor-in-chief, shares the story behind La Déferlante’s creation, its editorial vision, and the challenges of building a truly independent media outlet. We also explore how the magazine navigates current cultural and political shifts, its ambitions for the future, and its commitment to fostering collective joy and resilience through community events.

1. What inspired you and your team to create La Déferlante, and how did the idea evolve into the magazine it is today?

In early 2019, when the idea for the magazine first emerged, we primarily wanted to create a space that could showcase the editorial excitement surrounding feminist and gender issues and where different points of view could converge. It quickly became clear to us that a print magazine could allow us to document the post-MeToo era and serve as a “feminist toolbox” for understanding and embracing this revolution. So, we quickly began working on the form it could take and the type of texts, illustrations, and photos it could feature.

At the same time, and even before the publication of the first issue, we launched a newsletter on gender and feminism. It allows us to offer current insights and maintain our connection with the strong community that has formed around La Déferlante since its inception.

2. How do you choose the themes and topics for each issue, and what do you aim to achieve through the editorial direction?

The themes of dossiers and articles are born in different ways, either from a reading, from a meeting that we submit at an editorial meeting every Thursday. Often, they also emerge during meetings of our editorial committee composed of journalists, researchers, and activists. Sometimes, they are born from proposals sent by journalists and/or authors. On this basis, we design thematic dossiers: Birth, eating, fighting, abortion, resisting the far right, educating and soon informing oneself or caring for… Our aim is to show how questions of gender, class, and socio-ethnic origin nestle in all the interstices of everyday life. Every action (and this is why our dossier titles are verbs in the infinitive), every area of ​​our lives is traversed by logics of domination that we are keen to reveal and analyze.

3. La Déferlante is known for its feminist perspective, how do you see the role of media in shaping conversations about gender, politics and culture today?
   

It is essential because, along with cultural productions, the media are the interface through which most citizens become acquainted with the world and current events. Offering intersectional feminist points of view, dissecting the logic of oppression that I mentioned just before, is a way of questioning the dominant narratives formatted by racist, sexist and classist biases. For several years, even months, the rise of reactionary ideas has accelerated all over the world. Opinions are very porous to false information, relayed including by other media belonging to businessmen close to the extreme right (or downright extreme right). As an independent feminist and anti-racist media, we have more than ever the duty to uncover, to put into perspective but above all to propose other possible futures.

4. What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a co-editor-in-chief of an independent feminist magazine, and how do you navigate them?

In reference to what I said in a previous response, our main challenge currently is to continue building our editorial and therefore economic independence in order to continue, at our level, to counterbalance the racist, misogynistic, and transphobic narratives produced by the political class and relayed by the reactionary media. Our challenge is therefore as much economic as editorial. We need to perpetuate our model of independence without advertising and without a major shareholder. And for that, it requires us to continue to seek out new readers and convince them, through the quality of our content, to follow us and support us in the long term, by subscribing to the magazine for example.

5. What trends or shifts in feminist cultural and political discourse excite you right now, and how do you hope La Déferlante will contribute to those conversations?

I’m a little bothered by the term “excitement” because that’s not what drives us at the Déferlante. Besides, there’s nothing exciting about seeing children being bombed, people starving, citizens being discriminated against, people being deprived of their rights to control their own bodies… All of this is tragic, not exciting, and it’s important to say that.

There are so many crucial issues to follow right now: the moral panic being fabricated by reactionary circles around trans people, the exploitation of secularism to fuel Islamophobic and racist theories that particularly impact children of immigrant origin and women.

There’s also something very important happening around children’s rights, an awareness of the violence they suffer at the hands of adults. There was the Ciivise report that revealed the extent of the sexual violence committed against them; there’s the Berharram affair, which recounts the institutionalization of this violence used as a method of education. There’s the Le Scouarnec affair, named after the doctor who admitted to raping or sexually assaulting nearly 300 children over a period of 30 years. No one can ignore the systemic nature of violence against children anymore. And between victims’ groups and associations defending their rights, there’s a huge amount of documentation and advocacy work being done to shed light on this violence. This is something we document in our magazine, our newsletter, and our upcoming books.

6. Looking ahead, what are your ambitions for La Déferlante and your own work in the next few years?

With our magazine, our newsletter, and our publishing house, as well as our events, we aim to become the leading media outlet for feminist and anti-racist issues. We aim to continue documenting society as it is, as well as transformative social struggles. We aim to contribute, at our own level, to the renewal of narratives.

7. Do you work with other media and feminist movements in Europe? In a moment where the feminist movement is depicted as highly divided in different countries, how do you think transnational feminism can help in making the movement come closer? 

Before answering your question, I would like to return to the idea that the feminist movement is very divided. It is no more or less so than most political movements: the Republican Party in the United States suffers from intense internal warfare, as do the Republicans in France, Renaissance, the Socialist Party, and the Greens. Repetitively highlighting the divisions within the feminist camp fuels long-standing stereotypes about women who “fight each other’s battles,” fueling their divisions to the benefit of patriarchal dynamics. The feminist movement is rife with disagreements and debates, but that’s what makes it a vibrant movement!

We don’t have any active projects with international partners, strictly speaking, but we are in contact with many other publications elsewhere in the world. I’m thinking in particular of the journal Axelle, which was one of the pioneering feminist journals in Europe. We are also in continuous contact with feminist and anti-racist associations on a European scale (My Voice, My Choice Campaign in support of the European initiative for the right to abortion https://www.myvoice-mychoice.org/fr) and French scale.

8. The magazine is also holding launch parties for each edition – why did you decide as a magazine to work on cultural and festive events? What impact does it have on your work? What impact does it have on the feminist movement building in France?
   

Thank you for this excellent question! I think the debate was primarily about communicating about the launches of our new issues, but we quickly realized that our community of readers, or even just the people who followed us on social media, were very eager to connect with La Déferlante in person. Each of our launch events (but we also organize meetings in bookstores and participate in partnerships with quite a few cultural institutions) is an opportunity for a huge amount of discussion and encounters. They allow us to maintain contact with those who already follow us but also to meet potential new readers. So it’s essential to our development and, by extension, essential for our independence because, once again, we need subscribers to continue to exist without advertising and without major shareholders. Then, regarding the festive nature of these events, we quickly saw that people who are activists also need moments of cohesion. We talk a lot about “militant joy” in feminist circles lately and ultimately, these evenings are meetings to be together after having fought or debated and it is an essential fuel for the struggle.