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Title: When Theories Meet
Author: Hilton Bertalan
Date: 2011
Language: en
Topics: Post-Anarchism: A Reader, Emma Goldman, post-structuralist, post-anarchism, Friedrich Nietzsche, essentialism, gender, love, reform, prefigurative politics
Source: Retrieved on 2 September from http://um-ok.co.nf/post.pdf
Notes: from Post-Anarchism: A Reader, Pluto Press 2011

Hilton Bertalan

When Theories Meet

Naturally, life presents itself in different forms to different ages.

Between the age of eight and twelve I dreamed of becoming a Judith. I

longed to avenge the sufferings of my people, the Jews, to cut off the

head of their Holofernos. When I was fourteen I wanted to study

medicine, so as to be able to help my fellow-beings. When I was fifteen

I suffered from unrequited love, and I wanted to commit suicide in a

romantic way by drinking a lot of vinegar. I thought that would make me

look ethereal and interesting, very pale and poetic when in my grave,

but at sixteen I decided on a more exalted death. I wanted to dance

myself to death. (Goldman, 1933: 1)

The spaces in which subjectivities and perspectives are affirmed as

non-hegemonic, mobile, and constantly drifting are often associated with

post-structuralist thought. Yet this language resonates elsewhere. In

fact, it can be located in radical voices and texts often considered out

of reach to the theoretical abstractions of post-structuralist thought.

Perhaps most surprising is that it can be found in the

anarchist–feminist Emma Goldman. Known best for her assiduous political

activity, unkillable energy, repeated arrests, remonstrative oratory

skills, sardonic wit, and status as the ‘most dangerous woman in the

world’, another reading of Goldman’s work reveals a dimension that is

often overlooked; that is, one that is connectable to the theoretical

and political efforts of several contemporary theorists. To be sure,

this initial and modest knotting of voices is only a beginning, an

interceding requisition for future analysis, or, put simply, a

punctuating of moments in Goldman’s work worthy of closer examination.

Such work, I would argue, is necessary to avoiding a disavowal of

anarchist histories, and to understanding how the traces of certain

textual and political histories resonate with, and can work to inform,

contemporary conditions. If, in our contemporary condition, we are left

without a state of things to be reached or attained – if we have buried

pedantic, concretizing thoughts of revolution and subjectivity, and

instead found some measure of comfort in contingent, prefigurative,

productively failing and always labouring presuppositions – it is

important that in asking what it means to articulate futures and measure

efficacy under such conditions, we first glean the past for figures who

confronted similar dilemmas. I would argue that Goldman is such a

figure. In doing so I am suggesting that the manner in which many

contemporary activists and social movements conceptualize resistance and

organization is not entirely new. I am not attempting to graft the past

onto contemporary theoretical and political conditions, nor suggesting a

genealogical line between the two, but rather, locating resonances

between fields so as to support still relevant ethico-political

projects. What is most important about this task is a regenerative

reading of Goldman that draws out her commitment to ceaseless

epistemological and political change. This affinity echoes not only with

contemporary activists and social movements, but also, in particular for

my purposes here, the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gloria Anzaldúa,

Judith Butler and Gilles Deleuze. Using these thinkers to facilitate a

remembrance of Goldman makes it possible to connect her work with that

of post-structuralist anarchism (and post-structuralist thought more

generally).

At the outset I should mention feeling some displeasure toward the

brevity with which I’m forced speak of those who have written about

Goldman. Despite my sense of affinity for this diminutive group, I feel

it necessary to offer an accounting, albeit brief, of the ways Goldman

has been discussed. Considering the attention Goldman received during

and after her life, her emblematic mugshot, and her iconic status within

activist culture and anarchist historiography and scholarship, it may

appear puzzling to suggest that her work has not been read in the way I

am arguing it could. What is of interest to me here is how Goldman has

been read, and therefore, how it has come to be that certain elements of

her work have been given little consideration – how particular

dimensions have been overlooked or addressed with only passing, tepid

reference.

Collections, historiography and contemporary anarchist theory tend to

credit Goldman with introducing feminism to anarchism, and for her

tireless and diverse activism, yet fail to take her seriously as a

political thinker with an original voice. Anarchist anthologies (Graham,

2005), anarchist historiographies (Avrich, 1994), anarcha-feminist

collections (Dark Star Collective, 2002), and anarchist reference

websites (anarchyarchives.org) have all dedicated a great deal of

attention to Goldman. Despite this, however, they do not discuss

theoretical dimensions of her work, but rather, give a broad account of

her personal and political life. More recent theoretical discussions of

anarchist thought make no mention of Goldman (Day, 2005; Sheehan, 2003),

while George Woodcock’s important text, Anarchism: A History of

Libertarian Ideas and Movements (2004), and more contemporary texts from

Todd May (1994), Lewis Call (2002), Saul Newman (2001) and Murray

Bookchin (1995) make only passing remarks. Although usually credited

with providing a ‘feminist dimension’ (Marshall, 1993: 396) that

‘completely changed’ (Woodcock, 2004: 399) anarchist thought, subsequent

suggestions that she was ‘more of an activist than a thinker’ (Marshall,

1993: 396) overlook the extent to which she contributed to anarchist

theory. Murray Bookchin (1995) similarly praised Goldman yet took her

work even less seriously. Bookchin’s suggestion that he ‘can only

applaud Emma Goldman’s demand that she does not want a revolution unless

she can dance to it’ (1995: 2) is followed by a complaint about

‘Nietzscheans like Emma Goldman’ (8). Bookchin’s text Social Anarchism

or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (1995) is dedicated to

describing a perceived divide between the ‘postmodernist [...] flight

from all form of social activism’ typified by Michel Foucault and

Friedrich Nietzsche (‘lifestyle anarchism’), and a commitment to

‘serious organizations, a radical politics, a committed social movement,

theoretical coherence, and programmatic relevance’ (19) typified by

‘classical anarchists’ such as Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin

(‘social anarchism’). While it is easy to recognize Bookchin’s

preference, what is most interesting is that Goldman is the only figure

he places on both sides of the chasm. Although he associates Goldman

with the postmodernists who, he suggests, ‘denigrate responsible social

commitment’ (10), he commends her dedication to social change. Bookchin

never responds to this disjunctive tension or the implications it has

for his prescribed schism. Instead, he mentions Goldman only once more,

suggesting that she ‘was by no means the ablest thinker in the

libertarian pantheon’ (13). Not only does this provide another example

of refusing to take Goldman seriously as a thinker, it also demonstrates

how she provided a committed political articulation alongside an

affinity for the ceaseless transgressions that Bookchin finds to be such

a troubling and apolitical dimension of postmodernist thought.

In his canonical The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism

(1994), Todd May also makes a quick, albeit important reference to

Goldman. In a seminal text dedicated to the intersections of anarchist

and post-structuralist thought, Goldman is mentioned only once. By using

the work of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to discuss

anarchism, May is able to show the similarities between anarchism and

post-structuralism yet also sketch a demarcation between the

‘essentialism’ of the former and ‘anti-essentialism’ (13) of the latter.

A third of the way through, however, May claims that Goldman is one

exception to the essentialism of anarchism. ‘While anarchists like Emma

Goldman resisted the naturalist path (in an echo of Nietzsche, who was

founding for poststructuralist thought)’, argues May, ‘the fundamental

drift of anarchism has been toward the assumption of a human essence’

(64). Although I am not disputing the decision to focus on the

‘fundamental drift’ of anarchism, I am suggesting that May’s valuable,

albeit brief, reading of Goldman inaugurated a new way of reading her

work. In his book Postmodern Anarchism (2002), Lewis Call also makes a

single positive reference to Goldman. According to Call, Goldman

‘anticipated’ the postmodern ‘theory of simulation [and] denial of the

real’ (93). Similarly here, it is interesting that the anarchist who

‘anticipated’ a type of thought that Call connects to Nietzsche,

Deleuze, Foucault and Butler does not stimulate more interest or

enquiry. Further distinguishing between classical anarchism and

postmodern anarchism – for the purpose of demonstrating the radical

nature of Nietzsche’s theoretical project – Call argues that ‘previous

concepts of subjectivity (and thus previous political theories) focused

on being’ (50). Call then suggests that Nietzsche has ‘shifted our

attention to becoming’ and further demonstrated that ‘our subjectivity

is in a constant state of flux’ (50). Coincidentally, ‘constant state of

flux’ is the precise wording Goldman used to describe herself. And so

while their dealings with Goldman are curiously concise, I am indebted

to May and Call for their intimation, and for retrieving Goldman

(however measured their glances might be) by recognizing her connection

to contemporary thought.

Goldmaniacs and GoldmanologistsCandace Falk (1984) (curator and

director of the Emma Goldman Papers Project) uses the term ‘Goldmaniacs’

to describe those with a passionate interest in Goldman (xviii). The

term ‘Goldmanologists’ was used to describe those who may object to the

historically inaccurate Broadway musical portrayal of Goldman’s

involvement in the assassination of McKinley (June Abernathy ‘On

Directing Assassins’, <www.sondheim.com/shows/essay/

assassin-direct.html>).

In a documentary produced for PBS, Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly

Dangerous Woman, Alice Wexler (2003), one of the most prominent Goldman

biographers, suggests that Goldman couldn’t bring herself to criticize

Leon Czolgosz for his assassination of American President William

McKinley because she ‘identified him with Berkman’ (Goldman’s long-time

partner). Wexler’s view toward sublimation represents the tendency to

psychoanalyse Goldman’s life while ignoring certain elements of her

work. Wexler ignores not only the fact that Berkman himself condemned

Czolgosz, but most importantly, Goldman’s equable, thoughtful arguments

for why she, nearly alone amongst her contemporaries, refused to

criticize Czolgosz (despite the fact that he credited her as his

inspiration). One way to imagine this more clearly is to think of

Deleuze’s (2004) discussion of the judge’s response in the trial of

American activist Angela Davis. Deleuze writes:

It’s like the repressive work by the judge in the Angela Davis case, who

assured us: ‘Her behavior is explicable only by the fact that she was in

love’. But what if, on the contrary, Angela Davis’s libido was a

revolutionary, social libido? What if she was in love because she was a

revolutionary? (273).

The point Deleuze is making is that we should rethink the assumption

about the motivating factors in lives of revolutionaries – that they are

radical because they are in love. Instead, we can view Davis, and for

our purposes here, Goldman, as driven by a broader ethic of love that

makes each more radical, open and vulnerable. She is in love, and able

to defend Czolgosz, because she is radical, not because of some sense of

substitutability. Therefore, it is because of a radical pre-existing

imaginary and a co-constitutive commitment that certain kinds of

relations are imaginable, that love can be articulated in the ways set

out by Goldman (ways that I will explicate below). For Goldman, only

when it is always already there can it be unconditionally expressed,

rather than something that can be picked up and discarded, manipulated

and strategically deployed, or rooted, as in the case of Wexler, in the

confused projections of the heart.

In the first biography of Goldman, Richard Drinnon (1961) initiated the

aforementioned trend by suggesting Goldman ‘was by no means a seminal

social or political thinker’ (314). In the first biography to focus on

Goldman’s feminism, Alix Kates Shulman (1971) similarly argued that

Goldman was ‘more of an activist than a thinker’ (37). One year later,

Shulman (1972) again emphasized that Goldman ‘was more of an activist

than a theoretician’, stating further that ‘her major contribution to

anarchist theory was to insist on gender as a primary category of

oppression’ (36). Goldman is often commended as an indefatigable and

inspiring political force, yet one whose only theoretical contribution

is the grafting of gender upon a pre-existing anarchist framework.

Martha Solomon (1987) continued the theme by suggesting that Goldman was

‘not, however, an original theorist’, but rather, a ‘propagandist of

anarchism’ (38). According to Solomon (1988), even those who came to see

Goldman speak ‘came to see her as an eccentric entertainer rather than a

serious thinker’ (191). Nearly ten years later, Oz Frankel (1996)

locates Goldman’s ‘main strength’ not in her theoretical insights, but

rather, ‘her wizardry on the stump’, ‘theatrical presentation’, and her

‘full control of voice modulation’ (907). The more recent suggestion

that ‘Goldman was a person of action, not primarily a thinker and a

writer’ (Moritz and Moritz, 2001: 6), perfectly demonstrates that more

than 40 years of biographies have declined to classify Goldman’s life

and work as especially relevant to political thought or, for that

matter, as particularly radical, but rather, as the interesting work of

a vigorous and spirited agitator.

There are, on the other hand, a number of writers who have mined

Goldman’s work for its theoretical and political merit. Bonni Haaland

(1993), Lori Jo Marso (2003), Terence Kissack (2008) and Jody Bart

(1995) have each examined Goldman’s feminism through a close reading of

her views on gender, sexuality, reproduction and the women’s suffrage

movement. Most important to contemporary Goldman scholarship is the work

of Kathy Ferguson (2004), who has examined the connections between

Goldman and Foucault’s later work on the care of the self. Jim Jose

(2005) has also presented a criticism of the limited roles in which

Goldman has been cast and how the exclusive focus on her as an

interesting diarist and activist has served to overlook her

contributions to political thought. Leigh Starcross (2004) offers the

lone but important examination of Goldman’s connection to Nietzsche. In

her short but vital article, Starcross initiates a discussion that takes

seriously the ‘fundamentality of Nietzsche for Goldman’ (29) by pointing

out the number of times she lectured on Nietzsche and several of their

shared targets (state, religion, morality).

Throughout the rest of this piece, I shall periodically reference Lewis

Call’s (2002) distinction between postmodern and classical anarchism to

explicate Goldman’s bridging of the two. According to Call, postmodern

anarchism maintains classical anarchism’s objection to the state,

capitalism and centralized authority, but adds further dimensions by

analysing power outside the government and the workplace, and by

rejecting humanistic and naturalistic notions of subjectivity. More

specifically, Call claims that classical anarchism suffered from three

theoretical tendencies that distinguish it from postmodern anarchism,

thus ‘seriously limiting its radical potential’ (22). The three

characteristics that Call argues create this incommensurability are:

classical anarchism’s tendency to carry ‘out its revolution under the

banner of a problematically universal human subject’; an ‘almost

exclusive focus on the undeniably repressive power structures

characteristic of capitalist economies [thus] overlooking the equally

disturbing power relations which are to be found outside the factory and

the government ministry: in gender relations, in race relations’; and

anarchism’s ‘rationalist semiotics’ and its subsequent application of

‘the method of natural sciences’ (15–16). Yet much of Goldman’s

understanding of social change was not prescriptive, nor did it argue

for the final liberation of a universal self. [1] Her view of power as

present in fields of sexuality, gender, culture, everyday life and

internal struggle illustrates that her analysis was not exclusively

focused on class or economic systems. And as May (1994) points out, she

‘resisted the naturalist path’ (64) followed by many of her

contemporaries. These distinctions allow us to begin reading Goldman as

an important thinker in the trajectory of post-anarchist thought and as

a bridge between it and classical anarchism.

Neitzsche’s Dancing Star

I had to do my reading at the expense of much-needed sleep, but what was

physical strain in view of my raptures over Nietzsche? (Goldman, 1970a:

172)

I have been told it is impossible to put a book of mine down – I even

disturb the night’s rest. (Nietzsche, 1992: 43)

Goldman was mostly alone when letting in encounters with particular

philosophers, none more so than with her political and textual love of

Nietzsche. Most radicals of her era dismissed Nietzsche as a disquieting

and depoliticizing aristocrat whose work undermined the unquestionable

and fixed liberatory and procedural equation of anarchism. Against this

habit, Goldman searched Nietzsche’s work for its impulse toward revolt,

poring through his texts looking for the undetected spirit of radical

incitation. Described by Call (2002) as ‘strand one’ of the ‘postmodern

matrix’ (2) and by May (1994) as ‘founding for poststructuralist

thought’ (64), Nietzsche helps locate moments in Goldman’s work that

resonate with certain contemporary fields of theory. Goldman spoke more

highly and with greater intensity about Nietzsche than any other thinker

(anarchist or otherwise). ‘The fire of his soul, the rhythm of his

song’, said Goldman (1970a), ‘made life richer, fuller, and more

wonderful for me.’ ‘The magic of his language, the beauty of his

vision’, she continued, ‘carried me to undreamed-of heights’ (172).

Nietzsche’s influence on Goldman distanced her from most contemporaries,

many of whom viewed him with derision, as a ‘fool’ with a ‘diseased

mind’ (Goldman, 1970a: 193). Reflecting upon a heated exchange with Ed

Brady (her partner at the time) about the relevance of Nietzsche’s work,

Goldman described their relationship as ‘a month of joy and abandon

[that] suffered a painful awakening [...] caused by Nietzsche’ (1970a:

193). On a similar occasion, a friend, bewildered by her commitment,

assumed Goldman would be apathetic to Nietzsche due to the lack of a

palpably political tone in his work. Goldman, enriched by, and defensive

of, his work, argued that such a conclusion stemmed from an intransigent

refusal to understand that anarchism, like the work of Nietzsche,

‘embraces every phase of life and effort and undermines the old,

outlived values’ (1970a: 194). [2] For Goldman, anarchism constantly

challenged existing values, and should therefore have found its greatest

inspiration in the theorist whose work was, according to Deleuze (1983),

prefaced upon the belief that ‘the destruction of known values makes

possible a creation of new values’ (193). For Nietzsche (1969), thinking

should ‘first be a destroyer and break values’ (139). Elsewhere,

Nietzsche (1989) clarified the affirming character of this destruction

as ‘saying Yes to and having confidence in all that has hitherto been

forbidden, despised, and damned’ (291). At times, Goldman’s conception

of anarchism directly draws from this aspect of Nietzsche’s work.

Anarchism ‘is the destroyer of dominant values’, Goldman (1998) argued,

and the ‘herald of NEW VALUES’ (147). In the same essay Goldman used

Nietzschean-inspired language by calling anarchism the ‘TRANSVALUATOR’,

what she termed ‘the transvaluation of accepted values’ (169). [3]

Elsewhere, Goldman (1969) explicitly acknowledged that she borrowed this

concept from Nietzsche’s work: ‘I believe, with Nietzsche, that the time

has come for a transvaluation of things’ (241). Following Nietzsche,

Goldman viewed the transformation of values as a constant process – one

that created new values while undermining the basis and legitimacy of

existing ones. In claiming that ‘Nietzsche was an anarchist [...] a

poet, a rebel and innovator’ (1970a: 194), Goldman saw a political

relevance in his work at a time when many radicals perceived Nietzsche

as apolitical and irrelevant. At the height of political censorship in

the United States (1913–1917) – when Goldman was frequently arrested,

refused access to many halls and theatres, and her lectures closely

monitored or cancelled by local authorities – she spoke on Nietzsche

more than at any other time.[4] From this I conclude two things: one,

that Goldman responded to consistent persecution by lecturing on

Nietzsche at a time when his work was not considered threatening or

radical; and two, that Goldman perceived undetected anarchistic

sensibilities in his work and used this to intimate the radicality of

her speeches. What local authorities failed to realize was that much of

Goldman’s anarchism was rooted in Nietzsche, in whose work she saw the

greatest potential for radical social and individual transformation.

It is not surprising then that the phrase for which Goldman has come to

be known (‘If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’)

resonates with an analogy that was very important for Nietzsche.

Throughout his work, Nietzsche makes use of dance to explain perpetual

and creative epistemological shifts. As Deleuze (1983) suggests, for

Nietzsche, ‘dance affirms becoming and the being of becoming’ (194).

Nietzsche’s (1995) most fervent admiration is reserved for ‘books that

teach how to dance [and] present the impossible as possible’ (139), as

well as those that allow its reader ‘to be able to dance with one’s

feet, with concepts, with words’ (Nietzsche, 1982: 512). Works of this

motif would, according to Nietzsche (1969), ideally ‘give birth to a

dancing star’ (46). This is precisely the effect Nietzsche had on

Goldman. Although the famously attributed phrase was never actually

spoken by Goldman, the story from which it is taken conveys Goldman’s

embodiment of Nietzsche’s ‘dance’.[5] Upon dancing with what was

described as ‘reckless abandon’, Goldman was taken aside and told that

‘it did not behoove an agitator to dance’, especially someone ‘who was

on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement’ (Goldman, 1970a:

56). Considering her passionate commitment to his work, Goldman’s style

of dance itself might have been stirred by her attachment to Nietzsche:

‘better to dance clumsily than to walk lamely’, Nietzsche said (1969:

305).[6] Subjected to governessy reproof and told ‘her frivolity would

only hurt the Cause’, Goldman (1970a) became furious with the austere

suggestion that ‘a beautiful ideal’ such as anarchism ‘should demand the

denial of life and joy’ (56). Not only does this story provide an

example of Goldman envisioning social change as taking place in everyday

spaces and expressions – challenging Call’s reading of ‘classical’

anarchists as exclusively concerned with politics and the economy – it

also suggests that her conception of joy, play, dance and free

expression (notions that more generally contributed to her view of

social change) were inspired by Nietzsche. More than simply the physical

embodiment of creative expression, or the counterpoint to the perceived

and sought-after gravitas of classical anarchism, dance describes

Goldman’s approach to an anarchist life. Goldman’s desire to dance

herself to death (present in the epigraph of this piece) – that is, to

remain in a permanent state of conceptual and political motion – was

directly influenced by Nietzsche’s work.

Goldman’s (1998) view of the state was another aspect of her thought

inspired by Nietzsche. Echoing one of Nietzsche’s most oft-cited

metaphors, she wrote, ‘I still hold that the State is a cold monster,

and that it devours everyone within its reach’ (426).[7] According to

Goldman, the state ‘always and everywhere has and must stand for

supremacy’ (1998: 103). Similarly, Nietzsche called for ‘as little state

as possible’ (1982: 82), pointing toward his ideal location outside of

its purview: ‘there, where the state ceases – look there, my brothers’

(Nietzsche, 1969: 78). According to Call (2002), however, Nietzsche’s

criticism of the state did not result in a rationalist counter-system as

it did for many classical anarchists. ‘A Nietzschean’, according to

Call,

could argue that the anarchists ended up promoting a political theory

which would replace the nations of Germany and France with a ‘nation’ of

Bakuninites. The dominant figure in Nietzsche’s utopian political

imaginary is much more profoundly nonsectarian. She is indeed nomadic in

character. (41)

Precisely, she is Goldman. Here Call is referring to tendencies amongst

classical anarchists to prescriptively construct hegemonically utopian,

and often pastoral, imaginings. Goldman, however, problematized this

tendency. Goldman did not envision a nation of Goldmanites, nor did she

imagine the final eradication of domination brought forth by a new

system based on rationalist principles of human nature. Goldman

recognized that any conception, however rational it may have seemed, was

the product of particular conditions, and that those conditions were

always subject to change. As Nietzsche (1968) put it, ‘the character of

the world in a state of becoming is incapable of formulation’ (280).

Following Nietzsche, Goldman (1998) argued that the state (and for that

matter, any social or economic system) ‘is nothing but a name. It is an

abstraction. Like other similar conceptions – nation, race, humanity –

it has no organic reality’ (113).[8] Goldman’s willingness to divorce

herself from ideas premised upon a move toward rational and natural

conditions or social systems does, in fact, separate her work from many

classical anarchists. Goldman (1998) suggested that ‘the true, real, and

just State is like the true, real, just God, who has never yet been

discovered’ (102). Here again Goldman questioned the desire to formulate

a final and ideal social world based on rationalist assumptions.

Nietzsche (1968) similarly attacked socialism ‘because it dreams quite

naively of “the good”, true, and beautiful’ (398).[9] From Nietzsche,

Goldman borrowed a sense of constant change that necessarily undermined

notions of a universal and final solution to domination and oppression.

Although at times Goldman remains wedded to the dream of many socialists

and anarchists, her reading of Nietzsche couples her fantast moments

with a commitment to forms of chance and transformation. In fact,

despite Nietzsche’s lack of interest in politics and his vocal disdain

for nineteenth-century socialism and anarchism, Goldman was, in many

ways, the type of thinker he foresaw – the proverbial fish he hoped to

catch:

Included here is the slow search for those related to me, for such as

out of strength would offer me their hand for the work of destruction. –

From now on all my writings are fish-hooks: perhaps I understand fishing

as well as anyone? [...] If nothing got caught I am not to blame. There

were no fish. (Nietzsche, 1979: 82)[10]

The Pink Panther of Classical Anarchism

Two themes inform the rest of this piece: the concept of transformation

as it relates specifically to social change and political theory, and

transformation more generally focused on the self. For Goldman,

transformation of the social (organization, resistance, theorizing

social change) is equal to transformation of the self (responsibility,

care, ethics of relationality, issues of control and domination, notions

of subjectivity). I will here continue to make use of Call’s distinction

between classical and postmodern anarchism to show how the

transformative elements in Goldman’s work can be viewed as both

theoretically anticipatory and as a bridge between two seemingly

disparate modes of thought.

According to Call (2002), by ‘refusing to claim for itself the mantle of

absolute truth’, postmodern anarchism ‘insists upon its right to remain

perpetually fluid, malleable, and provisional’ (71). Yet Goldman too

voiced this refusal, and similarly viewed anarchism in this light.

‘Anarchism’, Goldman (1969) argued, ‘cannot consistently impose an

iron-clad program or method on the future’ (43). It ‘has no set rules’,

she proposed, ‘and its methods vary according to the age, the

temperament, and the surroundings of its followers’ (2005a: 276).

Nietzsche also refused to offer a blueprint for future (or even present)

readers to follow. ‘Revolution [...] can be a source of energy’,

Nietzsche (1995) wrote, ‘but never an organizer, architect, artist,

perfecter of human nature’ (249). Nietzsche’s (1982) further claim to

‘mistrust all systematizers’ (470) not only describes the approach of

Call’s postmodern anarchism, but is also similar to Goldman’s conception

of anarchism. As her statement above suggests, Goldman’s anarchism was

non-prescriptive and contingent. That is, she viewed it not as a closed

mapping that sketched forms of resistance or social organization, but

rather, as a flexible and open political philosophy in a state of

perpetual transformation. May’s description of a contemporary politics

informed by Deleuze reiterates Goldman’s view: ‘Our task in politics is

not to follow the program. It is not to draft the revolution or to

proclaim that it has already happened. It is neither to appease the

individual nor to create the classless society [...] Our task is to ask

and answer afresh, always once more because it is never concluded’ (May,

2005: 153). Deleuze (1983) himself states likewise that ‘the question of

the revolution’s future is a bad one, because, as long as it is posed,

there are going to be those who will not become revolutionaries’ (114).

Call (2002) too argues for ‘a state of permanent and total revolution, a

revolution against being’ (51). What this demonstrates is that Goldman’s

work resonates with the shared affinity of Deleuze, Call, and May for a

political philosophy that ‘leaves posterity free to develop its own

particular systems’ (Goldman, 1969: 43). Her work shares with them a

desire for struggle, victories, political dissensus and processes, and

social change, without an accompanying interest in becoming a totalizing

discourse, movement, or political philosophy. As Deleuze is arguing

above, the foreclosure of the unknown not only prevents people from

becoming revolutionaries, it also serves to stop revolutionaries from

becoming. Or, as Goldman (2005a) made clear, ‘there is no cut-and-dried

political cure’ (402).

Goldman’s (1998) refusal to ‘claim that the triumph of any idea would

eliminate all possible problems from the life of man for all time’ (440)

was met with discontentment. ‘“Why do you not say how things will be

operated under Anarchism?”’, Goldman (1969) lamented, ‘is a question I

have had to meet a thousand times’ (43). Deleuze and Guattari (1983)

would have supported her reluctance: ‘Where are you going? Where are you

coming from? What are you driving at? All useless questions [...] all

imply a false conception of voyage and movement’ (58). Goldman believed

that a political philosophy could be radical and emancipatory without

tethering itself to anodyne universals or essentialist notions. For

Goldman, anarchism was not encoded with a linear progression – it did

not have an identifiable beginning, ending or goal. Instead, it was

closer to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1983) claim that ‘there is no general

recipe’ (108) than the attempts by many of Goldman’s contemporaries to

locate the most egalitarian and natural forms of social organization. As

one of the most tireless and prolific radicals of the twentieth century,

Goldman was uniquely clear that her efforts were not focused upon a

single, attainable goal. Rather, her anarchism could best be described

as based on what Deleuze (2004) called ‘ceaseless opposition’ (259) – an

approach that remains ‘open, connectable in all its dimensions [...]

capable of being dismantled [...] reversible, and susceptible to

constant modification’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983: 26). What was for

Goldman (1969) a political philosophy that had ‘vitality enough to leave

behind the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain,

new life’ (49) is, for Deleuze and Guattari (1983), ‘the furniture we

never stop moving around’ (47). ‘How, then, can anyone assume to map out

a line of conduct for those to come?’, Goldman wondered (1969: 43). The

approach one could instead take, according to Deleuze (2004), is by ‘not

predicting, but being attentive to the unknown knocking at the door’

(346). Goldman would have agreed. ‘I hold, with Nietzsche’, she argued,

‘that we are staggering along with the corpses of dead ages on our

backs. Theories do not create life. Life must make its own theories’

(2005a: 402). Goldman’s anarchism did not predict or initiate a single

and dramatic political shift, but rather, was constantly renewed by the

context and conditions of resistance and the collectives and individuals

taking part in struggles.

Goldman’s political activity demonstrates just how radical the concept

of constant transformation is. It is not an apathetic, detached,

apolitical theoretical exercise lacking a consideration for

consequences. Positions are taken, identities are asserted, injustices

are addressed, and conceptual and logistical spaces are occupied.

However, as the above section has shown, contingency and the

accompanying refusal to prescribe or locate a static utopian social or

personal state are affirming and highly political positions that serve

to open up and cultivate possibilities for social change. As Call (2002)

states of Nietzsche’s ‘utopian’ thought, ‘it develops a devastating

critique of the world as it is, and dreams of a better future. But the

construction of that future is for those who follow’ (55). Deleuze and

Guattari (1987) also warned that

smooth spaces are not in themselves liberatory. But the struggle is

changed or displaced in them, and life reconstitutes its stakes,

confronts new obstacles, invents new paces, switches adversaries. Never

believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us. (500)

Likewise, Goldman can be seen to have searched for smooth spaces while

recognizing that this search was constant and contextual. Even the

similar phrasing of Nietzsche, Deleuze, Anzaldúa and Goldman is, at

times, particularly striking: ‘continual transition’ (Nietzsche, 1968:

281); ‘state of permanent creation’ (Deleuze, 2004: 136); ‘state of

perpetual transition’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 100); ‘state of eternal change’

(Goldman, 1970b: 524). This similarity stands in contrast to Call’s

(2002) argument that the ‘ongoing, open-ended, fluid anarchist

discourse’ of postmodern anarchism is categorically distinct from the

‘modern anarchist tradition’ (65) in which Goldman is most often

situated (by Call and others). For example, Goldman did not envision a

core human nature that could be set free from political and economic

constraints. ‘Human nature’, Goldman (1998) argued, ‘is by no means a

fixed quantity. Rather, it is fluid and responsive to new conditions’

(438). Engaged in what Butler (1993) would come to term ‘resistance to

fixing the subject’ (ix), Goldman perceived identity as always shifting.

In Goldman’s (2003) work there is a move away from a fixed being;

instead she refers to ‘little plastic beings’ (270).

Goldman’s (1970b) talk of ‘life always in flux’ and ‘new currents

flowing from the dried-up spring of the old’ (524) introduced a notion

of anarchism as ‘constantly creating new conditions’ (Goldman, 1969:

63). The fact that these statements span 40 years of Goldman’s life also

demonstrates that this current is present throughout most of her work.

These elements of Goldman’s work extended beyond her thoughts on

political and state apparatuses, also informing her views of gender and

sexuality. In fact, her rejection of the argument that gender is

biologically determined anticipated the anti-essentialism of many fields

of contemporary feminist thought. Goldman’s (1998) understanding of

identity as always ‘in a state of flux’ (443) marks a shift in anarchist

notions of gender (and identity more generally). Most of Goldman’s

contemporaries maintained a gendered binary that perceived women as

having biological predispositions that distinguished them from men. If

women were considered as deserving of political and economic equality

they were, at best, viewed simply as different biological characters,

and at worst, undeveloped thinkers. The latter was put forth by

Kropotkin (one of the pillars of classical anarchism) during a

discussion with Goldman:

‘The paper is doing splendid work,’ he warmly agreed, ‘but it would do

more if it would not waste so much space discussing sex.’ I disagreed,

and we became involved in a heated argument about the place of the sex

question in anarchist propaganda. Peter’s view was that woman’s equality

with man had nothing to do with sex; it was a matter of brains. ‘When

she is his equal intellectually and shares in his social ideals,’ he

said, ‘she will be as free as him’. (Goldman, 1970a: 253)

For many of Goldman’s contemporaries, ‘sex’ was either an issue of

little or no importance or justified as a category of exclusion. For

others, the inequality and oppression that stemmed from dichotomous

distinctions based on ‘sex’ was itself the issue to be opposed, rather

than the categories themselves, as well as their accompanying naturalist

assumptions. Goldman on the other hand, was not simply engaged in a

public discussion of gendered oppression and exclusion – for though she

was outspoken on this topic, she was not alone (a big fish in a small

bowl perhaps). Rather, what resonates with contemporary discourses is

the way Goldman conceptualized ‘sex’. Goldman’s (1969) demand that we

‘do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man

and woman represent two antagonistic worlds’ (225) is a good example of

this. Not only is this a unique rejection of the (still standing)

biological distinction between men and women, it also pre-dates Simone

de Beauvoir’s (1989) famous assertion that ‘one is not born, but becomes

a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the

figure the human female presents in society: it is civilization as a

whole that produces this creature’ (267). Gender, like morality and the

belief in the necessity of the state, is, for de Beauvoir and others, an

inscribed referent. ‘This conceptual realization’, Monique Wittig (1992)

wrote, ‘destroys the idea that women are a “natural group”’ (9). ‘The

concept of difference between the sexes’, she continued, ‘ontologically

constitutes women into different/others’ (29). For Goldman and those who

followed, this divisive binary both failed to understand the historical

and cultural specificity of gender and served to limit the diverse ways

it could be conceptualized and expressed. What Goldman (1933) called

‘the various gradations and variations of gender’ (2) abandoned the

delimiting belief in a biological predisposition, thus anticipating

contemporary articulations of gender and identity as ‘shifting and

multiple’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 18). Adopting this perspective is, as

Anzaldúa suggests, ‘like trying to swim in a new element, an “alien”

element’ (ibid). Like the kind of fish Nietzsche hoped to catch,

however, Goldman swam against the conventional current of her day,

adopting a unique view of gender that resonates with a contemporary form

of thought whose ‘energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps

breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm’ (ibid.: 2).

This nuanced mode of thought came through most in Goldman’s criticism of

the women’s suffrage movement. ‘Woman will purify politics, we are

assured’ Goldman (1969: 198) said with some irony. The essentialist

footing of the suffrage movement not only failed to ask who was

economically and politically excluded from the category of ‘woman’, it

also assumed that the simple presence of women (privileged white women)

would deracinate the workings of chauvinisms, inequities and injustices

and initiate democratic, sensitive, convivial and inclusive practices.

‘I do not believe that woman will make politics worse’, Goldman (1998)

argued, ‘nor can I believe that she could make it better’ (209).

Elsewhere, Goldman (1970c) stated, ‘I am not opposed to woman suffrage

on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it, but that cannot

possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that

wherein man has failed’ (53). Instead, ‘woman’ must, according to

Goldman (1969), begin ‘emancipating herself from emancipation’ (215).

That is, women, in fact everyone, should cast off the conceptual and

personal devotion to a static and universal self that can be liberated

through even the most minor participation (voting) in a liberal

democracy. As Butler (1993) puts it, the category of gender ‘becomes one

whose uses are no longer reified as “referents”, and which stand a

chance of being opened up, indeed, of coming to signify in ways that

none of us can predict in advance’ (29). Interestingly, Goldman’s

(2005b) criticism of the suffrage movement and her refusal to adopt its

naturalist category of ‘woman’ was perceived as anti-feminist and

injurious to a crucial and unquestionable political cause (two

criticisms that Butler has confronted).

Another important dimension of Goldman’s work is her prefigurative

conception of social change. In rejecting the idea of a natural,

universal, permanently liberated self, and by divorcing herself from the

dominant yearning for the singular revolutionary event, Goldman

envisioned social change as a continuous process that mirrored the

sought-after social world. For Goldman (1998), ‘the means used to

prepare the future become its cornerstone’ (403). In this context,

democratic forms of interacting and organizing are not deferred, but

rather, borne out immediately. ‘No revolution can ever succeed as a

factor of liberation’, Goldman argued, ‘unless the MEANS used to further

it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved’

(1998: 402). Not only does this indicate a rupture from Marxist and

utopian socialist pictorials of a better world to be constructed at a

later date, it also differs from several anarchist contemporaries who

imagined a revolutionary moment springing from an inborn, natural human

condition. Anarchism, according to Goldman (1970b), ‘is not a mere

theory for a distant future’, but rather, ‘a living influence’ (556).

Goldman took this further by also focusing on personal transformation.

Rather than paying exclusive attention to the alteration or eradication

of external economic and political conditions, Goldman (1998) demanded a

struggle against what she called the ‘internal tyrants’ (221) that, as

she further suggests, ‘count for almost nothing with our Marxist and do

not affect his conception of human history’ (122). Goldman’s thoughts on

tendencies toward the domination of the self and others resonate with

thinkers often cast as voices of post-structuralist thought. Foucault

(1983), for example, similarly advocated for ‘the tracking down of all

varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us

to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our

everyday lives’ (xiv). For both Goldman and Foucault, there is no pure

individual to be left alone or cultivated in the ideal environment.

Desire, justice, democracy and revolutionary social change do not appear

simply by adjusting external fields or institutions. Rather, they appear

when radical visions of social change are immediate aspects of our

interactions, language and forms of organization, and when we work to

make better versions of ourselves as we do better versions of our social

world.[11] Concerned with living their political philosophy, and

unwilling to accept the argument that ‘better’ selves are simply and

retrievably stalled or contained by manipulative sources of power,

Goldman and Foucault each questioned how a strong allegiance to

authority (our desire to dominate and to be dominated) maintained such a

strong psychic footing. Foucault’s (1983) curiosity toward ‘the fascism

that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates

and exploits us’ (xiii) is similar to Goldman’s (1969) position that the

individual ‘clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to

cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is raised against the

sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution’

(77).

With yet another allusion to Nietzsche, Goldman (1998) explicates a self

animated by perpetual transformation:

I do not mean the clumsy attempt of democracy to regulate the

complexities of human character by means of external equality. The

vision of ‘beyond good and evil’ points to the right to oneself, to

one’s personality. Such possibilities do not exclude pain over the chaos

of life, but they do exclude the puritanic righteousness that sits in

judgment on all others except oneself. (215)

In contemporary terms, Goldman’s recognition of the political

implications of self-reflection can be read as ‘staying at the edge of

what we know’ (Butler, 2004: 228) about both our social world and

ourselves – what Butler also calls the ‘radical point’ (ibid.) or

Anzaldúa (1987) termed the ‘Coatlicue state’ (63–73).[12] The Coatlicue

state, according to Anzaldúa, ‘can be a way station or it can be a way

of life’ (68). This way of thinking can stand for immobile darkness and

inactivity or it can offer constant introspection that opens new

possibilities and refuses a certain amount of ethico-theoretical

comfort. For Goldman, self-reflection is a constant process. Thus, she

can be connected to Anzaldúa as well as Butler (2004), who argued that

the unitary subject

is the one who knows already what is, who enters the conversation the

same way as it exits, who fails to put its own epistemological

certainties at risk in the encounter with the other, and so stays in

place, guards its place, and becomes an emblem for property and

territory. (228)

Or, as Goldman (2005a) put it (with the unfortunate pronoun of course),

‘I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he

is finished’ (153). Goldman was not interested in subjects who sought

arrival at a final cognitive–theoretical resting point. Goldman’s

anarchism was a political philosophy with currents that rejected the

desire for foundations, naturalist bases, fixed subjects and

prescriptions, instead, in a decidedly Nietzschean move, favouring the

unknown. Deleuze and Guattari (1983) express this notion of

transformation perfectly:

Form rhizomes and not roots, never plant! Don’t sow, forage! Be neither

a One nor a Many, but multiplicities! Form a line, never a point! Speed

transforms the point into a line. Be fast, even while standing still!

Line of chance, line of hips, line of flight. Don’t arouse the General

in yourself! Not an exact idea, but just an idea (Godard). Have

short-term ideas. Make maps not photographs or drawings. Be the Pink

Panther, and let your loves be like the wasp and the orchid, the cat and

the baboon. (57)

Beauty in a Thousand Variations

The works of Anzaldúa, Butler and Deleuze are clearly marked with an

affinity for multiplicity and interconnectivity – what I would refer to

as an ethic of love. Though known primarily for her discussion of love

with regard to her personal relationships and struggle for open sexual

expression, Goldman used the term to describe more broadly a spirit or

ethic that desired meaningful personal and organizational connections on

multiple levels. Love, according to Goldman (1970c), was a ‘force’,

providing ‘golden rays’ and the ‘only condition of a beautiful life’

(46). Always more at home in promissory love letters than prescriptive

texts or travelling along programmatic routes, Goldman understood love

as the most important element of life. It was, I would argue, a constant

drift through her work that constituted an element of thought and

interaction that most assured radical social and personal change. Love

as a whirling of possibility, a potentially binding political landscape,

as an affinity for the unknown, for futurity, for constant

responsibility, open and vulnerable connection, the multiple – this is

the guiding spirit of Goldman and the thinkers I have so far discussed.

For Goldman, without an ethic of love, social change is meaningless:

‘high on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command,

man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by’ (Goldman, 1970c:

44). ‘Love’, continued Goldman, ‘is the strongest and deepest element in

all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of

all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful

moulder of human destiny’ (44). Once again we see the presence of

Nietzsche in Goldman’s interest in the intractable, what Chela Sandoval

(2000), through her concept of ‘hermeneutics of love’, refers to as ‘a

state of being not subject to control or governance’ (142). Or, as

Nietzsche (1989) wrote, ‘that which is done out of love always takes

place beyond good and evil’ (103). In this, a Goldman sense of love, we

do not love under certain conditions, or because we understand one

another, or because we share a particular vision, or even because we

recognize each other as something relatable, translatable or familiar to

something in our psychic, preferential, emotional or political

sensibilities. It is not because we will be loved or find a desire

satisfied, a lack filled, or be offered something absent. Instead, for

Goldman, love takes place prefiguratively, before the encounter, before

the advance or event that usually marks its beginning or containment in

reachable social and political visions. This ethic of love also

articulates the desire for a multiplicity of political positions and

activities. As Foucault wrote:

We all melt together. But if we choose to struggle against power, then

all those who suffer the abuses of power, all those who recognize power

as intolerable, can engage in the struggle wherever they happen to be

and according to their own activity or passivity ... provided they are

radical, without compromise or reformism, provided they do not attempt

to readjust the same power through, at most, a change of leadership.

(Foucault and Deleuze, 2004: 213)

What is important for Foucault (and for other thinkers mentioned) is the

radical element – the element that does not re-inscribe, reform, or take

over existing systems of power. Love does not want power, nor does it

want what already exists. Multiplicity and interconnectivity, as

important aspects of love, cannot be found in hegemonic spaces of social

organization and resistance. Love does not seek to reform, but rather,

to transform, over and over, amidst a cluster of identities and tactics.

Goldman recognized the radical potential of this multiplicity:

‘Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us

not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us’

(Goldman, 1998: 167). Goldman not only saw danger in confrontations that

foreclosed multiplicity, she also celebrated multiple tactical and

political positions. The solidarity Goldman envisioned was not

contingent on a universal notion of social change or identity. Instead,

Goldman argued for solidarity for its own sake. As Anzaldúa (1990a) put

it, ‘unity is another Anglo invention like their one sole god and the

myth of the monopole’ (146). Goldman’s affinity for constant

transformation refused a fixed and stable unity while, paradoxically,

her ethic of love demanded interconnectivity and community. What this

interconnectivity is based on, however, remains shifting and under

review. As Anzaldúa (1987) suggested:

It is where the possibility of uniting all that is separate occurs. This

assembly is not one where severed or separated pieces merely come

together. Nor is it a balancing of opposing powers. In attempting to

work out a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is

greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a new

consciousness – a mestiza consciousness – and though it is a source of

intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps

breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm. (101–2)

Goldman’s anarchism cultivated multiplicity rather than attempting to

universalize disparate positions under a single theoretical rubric.

Goldman (2005a) called for ‘diversity [and] variety with the spirit of

solidarity in anarchism and non-authoritarian organization’ (348). What

this meant for Goldman anticipates Foucault’s indictment of the idea of

reform – an idea that, as Deleuze most clearly suggests (Foucault and

Deleuze, 2004), is ‘so stupid and hypocritical’ (208). Goldman supported

those individuals and organizations that neither sought to reinforce

existing structures of power, nor refused connection with those whose

tactics, organization and political philosophy did not mirror their own.

Like Deleuze, Goldman (1970a) saw it as ‘ridiculous to expect any

redress from the State’ (122), following Nietzsche (1995), who argued

that the state ‘tries to make every human being unfree by always keeping

the smallest number of possibilities in front of them’ (157). In this

regard, appealing to the state for change does not open it up to

multiplicity. At best, the state can be asked to include additional

elements, as long as those elements do not make certain demands (radical

change, uncertainty, revaluation of the legitimacy of the state). In a

politics of reform, the state form must remain dominant. However,

multiplicity not only demands diversity, but also refuses the domination

and centralization of a single form of organization, resistance,

interaction or identification. The starting point of such an ethic

‘includes instead of excludes’ (Anzaldúa, 1990b: 379). The question then

becomes, how can things be opened up, expanded, and interrogated, rather

than asking how others can be incorporated into an existing paradigm.

Goldman’s (1998) praise of life as representing ‘beauty in a thousand

variations’ (150) also appears to be drawn from her reading of

Nietzsche. She states, ‘I venture to suggest that his master idea had

nothing to do with the vulgarity of station, caste, or wealth. Rather

did it mean the masterful in human possibilities [to] become the creator

of new and beautiful things’ (ibid.: 232–3). ‘Nietzsche’s practical

teaching’, Deleuze (1983) wrote, ‘is that difference is happy; that

multiplicity, becoming and chance are adequate objects of joy by

themselves and that only joy returns’ (190). Deleuze (2004) argued that

Nietzsche should be understood as an ‘affirmation of the multiple’ which

lies in ‘the practical joy of the diverse’ (84). Goldman too understood

Nietzsche in this way, and consequently used his work to construct her

notion of anarchism as embracing the multiple and the relational.

Drawing from Nietzsche’s affinity for multiplicity, Goldman’s work, like

Anzaldúa’s (1987) new mestiza, ‘operates in a pluralistic mode’ (101).

‘She [the new mestiza] has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or

ideas in rigid boundaries’, Anzaldúa argued, ‘she learns to juggle

cultures, she has a plural personality’ (1987: 101). Put simply, Goldman

imagined the greatest potential for radical social change in the

cultivation and interconnection of multiple conceptual and political

forms.

And so it was that Goldman was content to occupy an itinerant

intellectual and political world without answers – happy to imagine a

thousand tactical, personal and political interconnecting variations.

Butler (2004) too expresses an affinity for ‘an affirmation of life that

takes place through the play of multiplicity’ (193). This demonstrates

that by relying upon Nietzsche and theoretical affinities that would

come to be associated with post-structuralist thought (indictment of

rationalist and naturalist assumptions, refusal to accept binaries,

rejection of fixed notions of revolution, social change and state forms,

and an affinity for multiplicity and perpetual transformation), Goldman

theorized resistance in a way that was distinct from many of her

predecessors and contemporaries. As Call (2002) points out, ‘today it

may not be enough to speak out only against the armies and the police,

as earlier anarchists did’ (11). Yet Goldman would have agreed with his

suggestion that an anarchist analysis must look further than the usual

targets. ‘Any solution’, Goldman (1969) argued, ‘can be brought about

only through the consideration of every phase of life’ (50). Similarly,

Foucault (1980) contended that ‘we can’t defeat the system through

isolated actions; we must engage it on all fronts’ (230). Anzaldúa

(2002) too demanded that we ‘make changes on multiple fronts:

inner/spiritual/personal, social/collective/material’ (561). Goldman did

not concern herself with only the most traditional and recognizable

sites of power. Power, for Goldman, existed in all institutions and

relationships, and therefore the struggle against domination needed to

take place constantly and in every aspect of life. As Goldman (1998)

suggested with regard to ‘sex’ and power, ‘a true conception of the

relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered’ (167).

That is, power is not a force wielded by some and denied others, but

rather, is present in all relationships and institutions.

One of the ways Goldman’s multiplicity manifested itself was through the

practice of solidarity. Goldman’s solidarity with anti-colonial

struggles in Africa and the Philippines and the participants of the

Mexican and Spanish revolutions (as well as countless other groups and

struggles) was an important element of her work:

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy

or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our

response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others

that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. (Goldman,

1998: 434)

For Goldman, ethico-political encounters must remain open and

democratic. For example, despite being credited as ‘the most dangerous

woman in the world’ for over two decades, Goldman rejected the call from

several contemporaries to counsel those fighting in the Spanish

revolution. ‘We must give our Spanish comrades a chance to find their

own bearings through their own experience’, Goldman (1998: 424) argued.

Her constant displeasure with American workers and their failure to

align themselves with struggles taking place elsewhere in the world

(1969: 142) anticipated the popularized slogan ‘teamsters and turtles’,

used by many within contemporary anti-globalization struggles to explain

a ‘new’ form of solidarity. However, the example that stands out most

among her contemporaries, and the one with which I will conclude, having

come full circle, was her defence of Czolgosz. Though she herself

disagreed with the tactic, Goldman (1998) made an important distinction

in her criticism: ‘I do not believe that these acts can, or even have

been intended to, bring about the social reconstruction’ (60). For

Goldman, each act of resistance did not have to be a sanctioned tactic

that acted as a component of a fixed trajectory toward the revolution.

Dissensus could and should be present (and coupled with democratic forms

of decision making) and tactics should be reconsidered, but not at the

expense of empathy, connection and a consideration of contexts. We

should not ‘arrive’, as Goldman stated earlier, nor desire that everyone

else challenging power reside in the same politico-theoretical space.

Goldman’s (1970a) insistence that ‘behind every political deed of that

nature was an impressionable, highly sensitive personality and a gentle

spirit’ (190) signified a unique and nearly solitary understanding of

the event. Goldman not only rejected the prevailing wisdom of distancing

oneself from certain people or groups with the hope of avoiding the

indictment of power or public opinion, she also refused the dichotomous

view of acceptable or unacceptable tactics. Moreover, she located the

affirmative element within Czolgosz’s action. As Deleuze (1983)

suggested, ‘destruction becomes active to the extent that the negative

is transmuted and converted into affirmative power’ (174). By suggesting

that Czolgosz’s ‘act is noble, but it is mistaken’ (Goldman, 2003: 427),

Goldman was attempting to open an inter-tactical dialogue – one that

neither condemns nor endorses, but recognizes the limitations of any one

tactic. Goldman’s suggestion that political acts need not be stepping

stones toward a universal and agreed-upon goal is similar to Michael

Hardt and Antonio Negri’s reading of Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X in

Empire (2000). Hardt and Negri defend what might be framed as an

unpopular tactic by arguing that the ‘negative moment’ articulated and

supported by Fanon and Malcolm X ‘does not lead to any dialectical

synthesis’ nor act as ‘the upbeat that will be resolved in a future

harmony’ (132). As such, the dialectic is no longer a necessary

political framework through which activists make tactical decisions. In

Czolgosz’s case, Goldman understood that his act was not the dialectical

‘upbeat that will be resolved in a future harmony’.

Under the wrinkling labour of contemporary political and theoretical

debates several questions have been asked. Among them: How is it

possible to maintain attachments to others, to subjectivities, to

futurity and imaginings, and to forms of organizing that remain

contingent? What does it mean to occupy the shaky scaffolding of

unstable and contradictory identities? What can be made of a theoretical

turn that involves the loosening of a commitment to a final

revolutionary moment? Prior still is the question about the consequence

of this shift and the coming to terms with certain losses? If radical

social change is perceived and articulated as an unrealizable fiction

that maintains a utopian imaginary without being wedded to its actual

realization, what becomes of political futures? Finally, are the

political protests, forums and ethico-political practices that have

captured the imagination of a wide range of theorists and been cast as

constitutive of a palpably euphoric and near utopian shift in social and

political possibility, and further, described as perpetually changing

and unique aggregates of previously conflicting groups and ideologies

now communicating and working across geographical and political lines,

entirely new? My argument here is simply that each of these questions

requires a dimension of remembrance, one that draws from the impetuses,

imaginings, political practices and failures of the past. To this end,

Emma Goldman offers one important and inheritable moment to which we can

look back as we move forward.

References

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... Inner Work, Public Acts’. In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical

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Routledge.

—— (1990a). ‘En rapport, in Opposition: Cobrando cuentas a las

nuesrats’. In Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo caras: Creative and

Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (G. Anzaldúa, ed.). San

Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

—— (1990b). ‘La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness’.

In Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo caras: Creative and Critical

Perspectives by Feminists of Color (G. Anzaldúa, ed.). San Francisco:

Aunt Lute Books.

—— (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza (2nd edn). San

Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

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[1] Although Goldman, like many others (including Nietzsche) sometimes

spoke in terms of an imagined utopian space, this does not undermine the

argument I am making, for three reasons: One, my intention is to make

suggestions for further readings by locating certain elements of

Goldman’s work. Two, I would argue that although Goldman did sometimes

speak in this way, she maintained the demand that utopian visions remain

open to constant modification and criticism. Three, I would further

argue that Goldman’s vision of a democratic, creative and open world is

the expected result of political activity. That is, this vision does not

undermine one’s ability to embrace uncertainty and multiplicity. Rather,

being inflexibly wedded to a very particular vision is what results in

the exclusion and lack of open-mindedness that Goldman problematized in

her work.

[2] The resistance Goldman experienced with respect to her attachment to

Nietzsche shows that what would otherwise be insignificant anecdotes

from her autobiography in fact represent important sources for

understanding her notion of anarchism.

[3] This clearly draws from Nietzsche’s notion of a ‘revaluation of all

values’ (Nietzsche, 1979: 96; 1982: 579). The different terms

‘revaluation’ and ‘transvaluation’ hold the same meaning for Goldman and

Nietzsche. In fact, Goldman’s use of the term ‘transvaluation’ seems to

be drawn directly from her German reading of Nietzsche, rather than a

new term inspired by him.

[4] Unfortunately, federal authorities confiscated the notes from

Goldman’s lectures (including those on Nietzsche) during a raid at the

New York office of her anarchist journal, Mother Earth. They have since

been destroyed or have not been released.

[5] Considered an authority on Goldman, Shulman (1991) was asked to

provide a friend with a photo of Goldman and an accompanying phrase to

be embossed on T-shirts and sold at an anti-Vietnam protest in the early

1970s. Shulman provided a number of passages from which quotes could be

drawn, with particular emphasis on one from Goldman’s autobiography. In

this passage, Goldman describes a party at which another anarchist

confronted her about her style of dance. What resulted was a

paraphrasing of this confrontation: ‘If I can’t dance I don’t want to be

part of your revolution’.

[6] It is worth noting that this arguably ableist, albeit analogous,

comment not only predates disability studies, but is also connected to

Nietzsche’s general contempt for physical ‘sickness’/’imperfection’ –

something he himself was for most of his life.

[7] In an earlier essay, Goldman credited Nietzsche with first calling

the state a ‘cold monster’ (1998: 117).

[8] This comment also demonstrates Goldman’s prescience and anticipation

of the contemporary (and arguably postmodernist) denial of organic

reality (the socially constructed ‘nature’) of categories such as race.

[9] Nietzsche viewed socialism and anarchism as an arrogant and

prescriptive ‘will to negate life’ (1968: 77), desirous of homogeneity.

[10] Despite Nietzsche’s suspicion of activists, he did periodically

expose a certain appreciation: ‘[T]here is nothing contemptible in a

revolt as such [...] there are even cases in which one might have to

honor a rebel, because he finds something in our society against which

war ought to be waged – he awakens us from our slumber’ (Nietzsche,

1968: 391).

[11] I am indebted to Mark Lance for this phrasing.

[12] Anzaldúa describes the Coatlicue state as ‘a rupture in our

everyday world. As the Earth, she opens and swallows us, plunging us

into the underworld where the soul resides, allowing us to dwell in

darkness’ (1987: 68).