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2 Emma Goldman's Identity: Anarchist, Anarcha-Feminist 2Emma Goldman’sIdentity:Anarchist, Anarcha-Feminist, Publicist, and Revolutionary Emma Goldman was not onlywhat American Studies scholar Marian J. Morton called “awoman without acountry”¹ or awoman who livedan“intense and fast-paced”² life, she was also an activist,dedicating her life, especiallyher years in the United States,³ to the fight for equality in all possiblesenses of the word. In addition, Goldman was one of the many Jewishimmigrants who reached the shores of the “New World” and dedicated her life to aform of polit- icallyleft radicalism, i.e. anarchism, which wasparticularlyattractive and con- vincing for them, as they had suffered greatlyfrom economic exploitation and social ostracism.⁴ At the sametime, these women and men not onlyturned to- wards radical thoughts,but they alsoabandoned their Jewish heritageand cut off theirties to their religious tradition.⁵ Goldman, however,likemanyothers, kept this identity,and, as Gerald Sorin remarks, “her commitment to anarchism did not divert her from speaking and writing,openlyand frequently, about the particularburdens Jews face in aworld in which antisemitism was aliving enemy.”⁶ Naturally, Goldman’spersonal experiences impacted on her political life, often directingittowards aspecific direction, or,asViviann Gornick put it, “[r]adical politics for her was, in fact,the history of one’sown hurt,thwarted, humiliated feelingsatthe hands of institutionalized authority.”⁷ ForGoldman, anarchism would therefore be more of a “protean experience … aposture, an at- titude, aframe of mind and spirit”⁸ that she continuouslylinked to the problems of her time, which in away reflected her own problems with the American state Marian J. Morton, Emma Goldman and the American Left: “Nowhere at Home” (New York: Twaynne, 1992),viii. Wexler, Emma Goldman,xv. ClaireGoldstene, TheStruggle for America’sPromise: Equal Opportunity at the Dawn of Corpo- rate Capital (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2014), 69 – 98. This interelationship between Jewishness and political radicalism is discussed in moredetail in Sebastian Kunze and Frank Jacob, “Introduction: Thoughts on Jewish Radicalism as aPhe- nomenon of Global Modernity,” in JewishRadicalisms:Historical Perspectives on aPhenomenon of Global Modernity,ed. Frank Jacob and Sebastian Kunze (Berlin: De Gruyter,2019), 1–20. Guttmann, “Jewish Radicals,Jewish Writers,” 563. Sorin, TheProphetic Minority,8.Sorin consequentlyfurther remarksthat Goldman’s “faith in anarchism, with its emphasis on universalism, did not result from and was not dependent on a castingoff of Jewish identity.” Ibid. Gornick, Emma Goldman,4. Ibid. OpenAccess. ©2020 Frank Jacob, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110679403-002 18 2EmmaGoldman’sIdentity and its society,the two thingsshe regularlystruggled with.⁹ One can also argue, as KathyE.Ferguson correctlydid, that Goldman was as much aproduct of the United States’ public mind, especiallysince the latter was threatened by the rad- icalism she represented. The famousanarchist “was largely aproduct of the dominant intersectingsystems of criminal, medical, and media technologies; her presenceinpublic life was construed primarily within the discourses of dan- gerthey generated.”¹⁰ Goldman was somebodywho continuouslyattacked the existent order,and thereby often accepted the danger her speeches and writingswould imposeon her personal life. Her “anarchist parrhesia”¹¹ steadily “combined frontal assault with carefullycalculated rhetoricalarts and tactical silences,”¹² but this strategy would alsolead the authorities to consider Goldman as one of the most danger- ous radicals in the country.Inparticular,the headofthe General IntelligenceDi- vision of the Department of Justice, the youngJ.Edgar Hoover (1895–1972),had developedapersonal hatredfor Goldman and would later not onlypreparea legal move against her and Alexander Berkman¹³ but alsocooperate with Attor- ney General A. Mitchell Palmer (1872–1936) to getrid of her to make America a safer place. However,itwas not onlyHoover and the US authorities Goldman had to worry about; duringher life, she would alsobeobserved by the govern- ments of several other countries,including Britain, Germany,and even the Soviet Union.¹⁴ Even beyond her steadyfight against governments around the world, Goldman’slife is, in away,outstanding.The famous anarchist alsotried to pre- sent this life in her autobiography Living My Life (1931), which Candace Falk re- ferred to as a “passionate memoir of agreat woman in the history of America’s radicalism.”¹⁵ Although “the autobiographystopsshortofserious self-criticism” and oftenleavesout critical self-reflection because Goldman “wanted to be seen Foragood survey of Goldman’smain strugglesduring her American years, see ibid., 6–91. KathyE.Ferguson, “Discourses of Danger: Locating Emma Goldman,” Political Theory 36, no. 5(2008): 737. Ibid., 738. Ferguson hererefers to Foucault, whoidentified parrhesia as “averbal activity in which aspeakerexpresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he rec- ognizes truth-telling as adutytoimproveorhelp other people (as wellashimself).” Michel Fou- cault, Fearless Speech,ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001), 19. Ferguson, “Discourses of Danger,” 738. Forthe information Hoover had collected on the anarchists,see FBI File on Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman Archives, IISH, ARCH01724. Ferguson, “Discourses of Danger,” 739. CandaceFalk, “Introduction,” in Emma Goldman, Living My Life: An Autobiography (Salt Lake City,UT: Peregrine Smith, 1982[1931]), vii. 2EmmaGoldman’sIdentity 19 as agreat example whose bravery and consistencywould inspire others,”¹⁶ it is an important historicaldocument that provides adeepinsight into American history at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in general, and of the Americanaswell as international anarchist movements in particular. Regardless of the lack of self-criticism by Goldman, the autobiographytrulyde- scribes the genesis and experiencesof“[one] of the century’smost renowned culturaland political leaders,”¹⁷ who nevertheless united multiple different iden- tities in one life. From the early1890s, Goldman was apublic figure and awell- known radical, and in the early1900s she would lecture in manyUScities, where the anarchist not onlytalked about her political ideas but alsodiscussed topics like “freelove, the drama, birth control, patriotism, militarism, women’seman- cipation, education, and free speech.”¹⁸ Considering these multiple perspectivesofGoldman’sactivity,itishardly sufficienttosimplyconsider her to be an anarchist.American historian Ann Uhry Abrams highlighted this complexity of the famous anarchist by referring to her as “the prototypicalmoral and political renegade, intense, out spoken and intolerant.”¹⁹ In fact,Goldman seemed to be “an omnipresent spokeswom- an, organizer,and supporter”²⁰ who would stand up against anyform of injus- tice, fight against anysign of inequality,and demand freedom for women, work- ers, and humanityasawhole. The present chapter will try to link these different identitieswhile discussingGoldman’spolitical development until the outbreak of the First World Warin1914. Her radicalism was the result of aconglomerate of sources thatneeds to be understood as such. One sourcefor her radicalismis not enough,and Goldman surelydeserves multiple emblems of radical activism. She was not onlyanimmigrant,ananarchist,afeminist,orarevolutionary.She was all that at once, although some of these identitiesmight have been more ob- vious than others at different moments of her life. However,tounderstand Gold- man means to understand and to accept this complexity of her different identi- ties. Beforewecan discuss the revolutionary Goldman in more detail, therefore, it is important to approach her otheridentities first,asthey willbehelpful for a better understanding of the anarchist’stheoretical interpretationofananticipat- ed revolution that would eventually, or at least supposedly, free the whole of hu- Ibid., viii. Ann Uhry Abrams, “The FerrerCenter:New York’sUnique MeetingofAnarchism and the Arts,” New York History 59,no. 3(1978): 306. Falk, “Introduction,” vii. Abrams, “The FerrerCenter,” 309. Auleta and Goldstone, “happy birthday, emma,” 2. 20 2EmmaGoldman’sIdentity manityfrom suppression, injustice, and inequality,i.e.the thingsthatbothered the anarchist intellectual the most. Goldman was borninthe Russian Empire in 1869—in Kovno, present-day Kaunas in Lithuania—as an “unwanted child of apoor Jewish family”²¹ and “suf- fered severe beatingsfrom her father as ayoung child.”²² When she later emi- grated, she did it in part because she brokewith an orthodoxJewishlife, her pa- rents and the Russian Empire, maybe even because the later radical, “[e]ven as a young girl, … manifested arebellious and sturdynature.”²³ When the family moved to St.Petersburgin1882, Goldman not onlygot in contact with contem- porary Russian literaturebut also with radical thoughts for the first time, as the populist and nihilist movementscriticized the Czarist order,oftenusing violence as their means as well.²⁴ In the United States,the young emigrant hoped to find a new life, onlydetermined by American values, especiallyliberty,and the pursuit of happiness.²⁵ She was accompanied by her sister Helena (1860 –1920), with whom the later anarchist started her life in the US garment industry,whereso
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