16

This article explores the long history of the Anthropocene to identify prospects for emancipation? in the present. Discussing Engels’ hypotheses on the birth of property and patriarchy, James Scott’s on the joint invention of agriculture and states, or Marijas Gimbutas’ on the matrifocal civilizations of archaic Europe, the author shows that the root of the current socio-ecological crises must be sought in the domestication of women, that is to say the appropriation of their bodies and their knowledge in matters of subsistence and reproduction. But the article also shows that this domestication is never complete and that it has even tended to lose ground in the face of the contemporary renewal of peasant subsistence agriculture, within which women play a leading role. It is therefore in the experience and practices of peasant women that the possibility of a better world lies.