Within the popular consciousness, Emma Goldman has become something of an icon, a symbol for rebellion and women’s rights. But there has been surprisingly little substantive analysis of her influence on social, political, and feminist theory. In Feminist Interpretations of Emma Goldman, Weiss and Kensinger present essays that resist a simplistic understanding of Goldman and instead attempt to examine her thinking in its proper social, historical, and philosophical context. Only by considering the sources, influences, and specific significance of Goldman’s ideas can her proper place in feminist theory be truly understood.
In addition to the editors, the contributors are Martha A. Ackelsberg, Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Lynne M. Adrian, Berenice A. Carroll, Voltairine de Cleyre, Janet E. Day, Candace Falk, Kathy E. Ferguson, Marsha Aileen Hewitt, Lori Jo Marso, Jonathan McKenzie, Alix Kates Shulman, Craig Stalbaum, Jason Wehling, and Alice Wexler.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introductory Essays
Digging for Gold(man): What We Found
Penny A. Weiss and Loretta Kensinger with Berenice A. Carroll
Anarchy in Interpretation: The Life of Emma Goldman
Jason Wehling
Part One: Specific Themes and Central Concerns
1. Let Icons be Bygones! Emma Goldman: The Grand Expositor
Candace Falk
2. A Feminist Search for Love: Emma Goldman on the Politics of Marriage, Love, Sexuality, and the Feminine
Lori Jo Marso
3. Religion, Faith and Politics: Reading Goldman Through Nietzsche
Kathy E. Ferguson
4. The “Individual” in Goldman’s Anarchist Theory
Janet E. Day
5. Emma Goldman and the Theory of Revolution
Berenice A. Carroll
6. Who Were Emma Goldman’s “Children”? Anarchist Feminism and Childhood
Penny A. Weiss
Part Two: Historical Roots and Current Connections
7. Manufacturing Consensus: Goldman, Kropotkin, and the Order of an Anarchist Canon
Jonathan McKenzie and Craig Stalbaum
8. Emma Goldman and the Spirit of Artful Living: Philosophy and Politics in the Classical American Period
Lynne M. Adrian
9. Emma Goldman on Mary Wollstonecraft
Alice Wexler
10. Dancing in the Revolution: Emma Goldman’s Feminism
Alix Kates Shulman
11. Speaking with Red Emma: The Feminist Theory of Emma Goldman
Loretta Kensinger
Part Three: Political Change: Theory and Practice
12. Anarchist Alternatives to Competition
Martha A. Ackelsberg and Kathryn Pyne Addelson
13. In Defense of Emma Goldman
Voltairine de Cleyre
14. Emma Goldman: The Case for Anarcho-Feminism
Marsha Hewitt
15. The Emma Goldman Clinic Mission Statement
Grave Marker
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
“The centrality of Goldman’s work, rather than her personal life, is a refreshing shift, making room to explore new territory in the scholarship of this almost mythical figure.”
