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Title: Dora Marsden "The Stirner of Feminism" ? Author: Bernd A. Laska Date: 2001 Language: en Topics: Max Stirner, egoism, egoist, Dora Marsden, anarcha-feminism, feminism Source: http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/enmarsden.html
Dora Marsden (1882-1960) was the editor of some avant-garde literary
journals (1911-1919; Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce
made their debuts in these) as well as an author with philosophical
ambitions. She is being rediscovered of late, sometimes as "The Stirner
of Feminism". This article, after presenting a biographical sketch,
focuses on that title. It shows that Marsden was at no time a true
follower of that infamous "egoist" philosopher, but instead went through
an evolutionary period in which she bypassed Stirner and arrived at
standpoints which cannot be classified as having transcended Stirner --
firstly at a simple assertive "archism" (as opposed to anarchism),
finally at a mystical "egoist" cosmology.
[Dora Marsden, born: 5 March, 1882 in Marsden/Yorkshire/England; died:
13 December, 1960 in Dumfries/Scotland.]
The fourth of five siblings, Marsden was born on the fifth of March,
1882, in Marsden, a small village near the industrial town of
Huddersfield in the British county of Yorkshire. Her father was the
owner of a small textile factory. After losing this means of income as a
result of his own mistakes, he abandoned his family in 1890, forcing
Marsden to grow up from then on in very meager circumstances. Marsden
attended a school that was incidentally one of the few free of church
influence and that offered her at the age of thirteen the possibility to
teach the lower grades, thereby contributing to the family's livelihood.
By the time she was eighteen, she had through this job already acquired
the qualifications necessary to become a teacher; however, she chose not
to seek a higher position at the school, instead applying for --and
receiving -- a stipend for study at a university in Manchester. Her
three full-paid years of study were then followed by five obligatory
years working as a teacher.
Even during the course of her studies, Marsden involved herself with the
British women's rights movement (suffragettes). At the end of her
compulsory service as a teacher, and after she was arrested in 1909,
owing to political activity, she accepted a full-time position with the
WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union) and became nationally
recognized as the organizer and aggressive leader of a number of
spectacular campaigns. In spite of -- or rather, due to -- her daring
efforts on behalf of the cause of women's rights, Marsden found herself
in ever-growing conflict with the authoritarian leadership of the WSPU,
which favored moderate tactics, and in early 1911, she decided to leave
the group.
At the same time, Marsden further developed the philosophical foundation
of her political involvement, which she had begun during her years of
study. This can be observed in detail through examination of her
contributions to the periodicals which she, with financial support of
well-to-do female patrons -- mainly the author Harriet Shaw Weaver
(1876-1961) -- published in London in the years that followed: »The
Freewoman« (November, 1911 to October, 1912), »The New Freewoman« (June,
1913 to December, 1913), and »The Egoist« (January, 1914 to December,
1919). Like the sequence of titles, the varying captions signal
Marsden's development in the -- here, especially -- interesting stage of
1912 to 1914; "A Weekly Feminist Review," which found the suffragette
movement to be too confining, soon became in May of 1912, "A Weekly
Humanist Review," and in June, 1913, "An Individualist Review," which, a
bit later, received the lasting title of »The Egoist.« During this time,
1912-1914, Marsden continued to develop and change her philosophy, and
in doing so, "transcended" anarchism.
Marsden's periodicals had, however, no explicit political objective,
instead representing above all products of the Anglo-American literary
avant-garde of the time (futurism, modernism, egoism, imagism,
vorticism, etc.). A few writers who later achieved fame were more or
less closely associated with these magazines. Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot,
D.H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Herbert Read, and others published their
early attempts here, while James Joyce printed his »Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man« for the first time as a serial in »The Egoist.«
In the articles following that phase of 1912 to 1914, which Marsden
herself wrote in »The Egoist,« her tendency to base her own initially
individual-anarchist, later termed "egoist," philosophy and her
resulting opinions on a new idea of anthropology became ever clearer.
This new anthropology still needed to be advanced and embedded in a
likewise new type of cosmology by means of the newest scientific
knowledge. Eighteen articles under the title »The Science of Signs«
(1916-1919) were the collective beginning of the endeavors pursued by
Marsden until the end of the nineteen-twenties.
In order to have more time for these philosophical ambitions, Marsden
had in 1915 already left a good deal of the editorial work to a few
committed co-workers (Weaver, Pound, Eliot). In 1920, after »The Egoist«
came to an end, she withdrew to a secluded spot in the Lake District,
where she and her mother spent the next one and a half decades alone.
During this period of self-imposed isolation, Marsden worked on her
"great work," which continued to expand and incorporated into itself
mathematics, physics, biology, and -- theology. Of this magnum opus,
which was laid out in six volumes, only two titles appeared, however,
published again by her loyal friend and patron Harriet Shaw Weaver via
her "Egoist Press": »The Definition of the Godhead« (1928) and
»Mysteries of Christianity« (1930).
This work of ten laborious years in which Marsden wanted to integrate
her earlier feminist, anarchist, and egoist thoughts, as well as
establish as -- irrespective of mainstream opinion -- "scientifically
valid," came up against absolute indifference not only from the general
public but also from Marsden's former supporters. That was the main
cause for Marsden's "breakdown" in 1930, from which she would for
intermittent periods briefly recover. When her mother finally died in
1935, Marsden sank into "deep melancholy" and was taken by relatives to
a home for psychologically ill patients in Dumfries/South Scotland. She
lived there for another twenty-five years without ever taking up her
literary work again.
The development of Marsden's theory formation is of interest here only
insofar as it directly relates to the theme of anarchism in the
relatively short period from ca. 1912 to 1914. Until 1912, Marsden's
viewpoint had progressed from a socialist to a feminist and humanist and
finally to an individualist point of view, which she termed egoist and
in which all that had come previously was "alike contained and
transcended." Literary "egoisms" had come into vogue since ca. 1890,
most from the Continent, penetrating the Anglo-Saxon sphere (Nietzsche,
Barrès, and others) and causing the discourse in Marsden's »Freewoman«
to affirm egoism before the name of Stirner was even mentioned.
Nevertheless, the American culture critic Floyd Dell addressed Marsden
even then -- due to her programmatic opening article (»Bondwomen,« 23
Nov 1911) -- admiringly as "The Max Stirner of Feminism" (»Women as
World Builders,« p.103).
After Stirner's »The Ego and His Own« appeared in English (London, 1912)
this book seemed to Marsden to be of especially remarkable value.
Contrary to habit, she even spoke about the book once, enthusiastically
and with unchecked superlatives: it was (not "one of the," but rather)
"the" "most powerful work" that had ever appeared (1 Sept 1913). -- Only
he or she who is familiar with the peculiar ways in which Stirner's
thought was received, particularly those approving (Mackay, Ruest,
Jünger; see Laska, 1996), will look more closely here.
The first time Marsden dealt with Stirner was in her article, »The
Growing Ego« (8 Aug 1912). An unidentified correspondent had asked her
to subject Stirner's theories to the most thorough of tests. This, she
said at the outset, "we" (she always used the plural here) will without
a doubt soon do; for the time being, however, we need to gain control
over the penetrative influence which Stirner's book exerts on us, and
namely, we must first put aside the profound truth which it contains and
instead expose the "abrupt and impossible termination of its thesis."
Marsden then proceeded as follows: She qualified and reduced Stirner, as
she, like many authors before and after her, interpreted his theories as
being tautological. She opined that Stirner had indeed done away with
the concept of ethics, religion, God, and the human being as external
powers that affected the ego -- which, incidentally, was nothing great,
because these are, in any case, unreal -- but: "If the Ego needs the
realisation in itself of morality, or religion, or God, then by virtue
of its own supremacy, the realisation will be forthcoming." The problem
lies within each ego itself. Fortunately, there are some few "positive
persons whom we call personalities," and from them, the "poets and
creative Thinkers," we (we, incl. Marsden?, who are not that) could
experience what such a positive ego "realizes." This is, above all, the
idea of God. It originates spontaneously from the ego and has nothing to
do with external authority. The bottom line: "Let us agree with Stirner
that God neither postulates nor controls the Ego. But the Ego does
postulate God..."
Marsden's resistance to Stirner's "penetrative influence" gives an
impression of hastiness. How she handled Stirner can only be inferred,
because she never wrote the in-depth, argumentative analysis of him
which she had promised. Instead, a year later, one read the cited,
gushing -- but at the same time oddly casual and isolated, and above
all, previously disclaimed -- judgment of Stirner's »Ego.« Soon after,
in reply to reader's letters, which attacked Marsden, claiming her
magazine was purely "Stirnerian," Marsden wrote (15 Jan 1914) that,
while Stirner's certain influence undoubtedly suited her work, such was
certainly not the appropriate adjective for the periodical meanwhile
being published under the name of »The Egoist.«
This statement held true. Marsden let the matter concerning Stirner drop
without any public argumentation. He was barely mentioned again in »The
Egoist«; at most, one of his showier sayings was paraphrased from time
to time. In the aforementioned series of articles, with which Marsden
began to develop her "egoist" anthropology and cosmology, Stirner never
appeared again, not even in the chapter titled »The "I" and the "Ego." -
A differentiation« (Sept 1916). Floyd Dell's opinion that Marsden was
the (female, Anglo-American) counterpart to Stirner, which can still be
found in texts every now and then, barely stands on solid ground.
Although Marsden avoided making an analysis of Stirner, she still
adopted an eclectic few pithy theses from him; however, none were either
fundamental or specific. The manner of her selective appropriation in
particular was seen in the dispute she fought out with Tucker in her
periodicals (see Parker, 1986, both articles).
Benjamin R. Tucker (1854-1939) was from 1881 to 1907 publisher of the
individualist-anarchist magazine »Liberty,« which was published in New
England (Boston, New York). In the late 1880s, the polyglot journalist
James L. Walker introduced Stirner, who was then relatively unknown even
in Germany, as a topic of discussion in the magazine. The result was an
irreconcilable polarisation of opinions, within both the readers and the
editorial staff. Stirner's morally indignant opponents respectively
canceled their subscriptions and contributions. Therefore, in spite of
Tucker and the remaining contributors, »Liberty« became in no way
Stirnerian. On the contrary, once the periodical divided, the theme of
Stirner was only briefly and in a subdued manner discussed and quickly
"forgotten." In 1907, after a twenty-year delay, Tucker finally issued
the first English translation of »Der Einzige und sein Eigentum.«
Shortly after, as a result of the fire that destroyed his publishing
house, he ended his journalistic career and moved to France with the
intention of spending the rest of his life in seclusion.
However, Tucker once broke his resigned silence after 1907, because
Marsden's newly established »The Freewoman« gave him a reason to be
somewhat optimistic again. He began to write from June, 1913, onwards in
»The New Freewoman.« His contributions were mostly correspondence from
Paris but also theoretical articles in which he, as before in »Liberty,«
promoted Proudhon's mutualism. A social contract was practically
indispensable for a life in society, he said, and such a contract that
did not bind the citizen to God and a sovereign ruler but only to his
own conscience "would have been acceptable even to Max Stirner as a
charter for his 'Union of the Free'." Marsden replied that such a
society would, in effect, be more repressive than all those that came
before, because the "State" which had been transferred to the conscience
would be omnipresent. She saw no fundamental difference between Tucker's
"individualist" anarchism and collectivist anarchism, terming it a
"clerico-libertarian" doctrine -- a criticism with which she could have
quoted Stirner and proclaimed: Our anarchists are pious people!
Tucker was angered and finally broke off the debate. He refuted
Marsden's claim of being an anarchist, instead terming her "archist and
egoist," and in March, 1914, he withdrew for good from public debate.
Marsden took up this polemic designation positively and professed her
"archism" in a direct reply (2 March1914), as well as in a later article
about »The Illusion of Anarchism« (15 Sept 1914). Every living being,
she said, is archist from birth, because it seeks through all means to
foster its own interests rather than those of others. Anarchism, on the
other hand, preaches -- "like any church" -- that one should deny his
innate archism=egoism. An "inner spiritual police," the conscience,
should prohibit him from indulging his natural need for domination and
for the unhampered gratification of his wishes. Some anarchists were
indeed for the idea of the ego as a sovereign ruler, but only when it
had first changed itself in a definite way, whereas Marsden, as an
archist, meant the real, existing, unchanged individuals and their egos,
their spontaneous wishes and desires as well as their "vulgar simple
satisfaction according to taste -- a tub for Diogenes; a continent for
Napoleon; control of a trust for Rockefeller." [And what for Dora
Marsden?] Referring to Tucker's remark, which noted that history up
until the present took exactly this course, Marsden answered that this
showed exactly -- in line with philosophical pragmatism -- that the
concept was correct. The sooner the miserable wretches became archists,
that is to say, looked after their own interests, the better (2
March1914).
The discussion between Marsden and Tucker touched upon that theoretical
as well as practical problem which is of chief importance to any
thoroughly considered, radical (not just "socialist") anarchism: the
anthropological phenomenon that one can try to name and circumscribe as
that of "voluntary servitude" / of "conscience" as an internalized
governing authority / of the "enculturation" of every newborn in a
social system rooted in millennia / of an unconscious and irrational
"superego," which is implanted in every individual, or as related
concepts. Characteristic of this discussion between two protagonists who
are often portrayed as being Stirnerian is that they, like many other
thinkers (see Laska, 1996), never once perceived the quality of
Stirner's given form of the problem, allegedly or ostensibly developing
Stirner's ideas but actually missing them, Tucker in individualist
anarchism and Marsden initially in an assertive trivial-egoism, called
"archism," later in a mystical-cosmological "all-egoism."
Dora Marsden's articles and commentaries in:
The Freewoman, 1 vol., 23rd Nov 1911 to 10th Oct 1912;
The New Freewoman, 1 vol., 15th Jun 1913 to Dec 1913 (Reprint 1967);
The Egoist, 6 vols., Jan 1914 to Dec 1919 (Reprint 1967).
On Dora Marsden:
Sidney E. Parker: The New Freewoman. Dora Marsden & Benjamin R. Tucker.
In: Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty, ed. by Michael E.
Coughlin, Charles H. Hamilton, Mark A. Sullivan. New York 1986.
pp.149-157;
Sidney E. Parker: Archists, Anarchists and Egoists. In: The Egoist
(London), Nr.8 (1986), pp.1-6.
Both articles also available at: "The Egoist Archive" sowie "The Memory
Hole"
Les Garner: A Brave and Beautiful Spirit. Dora Marsden 1882-1960.
Aldershot, Hants., GB 1990. 214pp.
Bruce Clarke: Dora Marsden and Early Modernism. Gender, Individualism,
Science. Ann Arbor, MI, USA 1996. 273pp.