It was one of the busiest women in the anarchist claim and put into practice rights of the other half of the sky. Now
editions BFS will publish yet another collection of essays, entitled "Feminism and anarchy." We publish excerpts from the introduction.
Negli ultimi decenni sono stati dedicati ad Emma Goldman numerosi scritti; si tratta per lo più di studi di carattere biografico, pervasi da un’ammirazione profonda per il suo attivismo appassionato, il suo temperamento indomabile, l’audacia delle sue campagne sul controllo delle nascite e il libero amore, il rigore della sua lotta contro la coscrizione e la guerra, il prezzo altissimo pagato per le sue idee. In una tale impostazione la maggior parte degli autori ha seguito il sentiero tracciato da Emma Goldman stessa nell’autobiografia, Vivendo la mia vita , l’avventura eroica di una donna, Jewish immigrant, anarchist who was able to join in their lives to their ideals. (...)
early thirties Emma Goldman had become a mythical figure, an icon, a symbol of pride anarchist. Rarely studies have questioned, however, a myth that has long obscured the complexity and the thought of radical Emma Goldman. The fiery activist and rebel have overshadowed the thinker. Lacks a true intellectual creativity, so often excluded from general studies on anarchism that those on feminism, it has been described as a popularizer of the theories of others, especially of Bakunin and Kropotkin. "She was absolutely not a thinker politica e sociale di rilievo». Questo giudizio, espresso nel 1961 da Richard Drinnon in “Rebel in Paradise”, è stato costantemente ripreso negli anni successivi. Perpetuando una concezione consolidata nella storia del pensiero politico che contrappone vita emozionale e pensiero, la maggior parte degli studiosi ha sminuito il contributo dell’anarchica russa sul piano teorico. Non stupisce quindi che siano state soprattutto le studiose femministe, nella convinzione che l’esperienza esistenziale arricchisca e illumini il pensiero, a considerare la filosofia politica e sociale di Emma Goldman degna di attenzione.
Le ricerche recenti hanno messo in rilievo la ricchezza della sua formazione culturale e teorica che, oltre agli anarchici European individualism of Nietzsche and Stirner, Ibsen, the authors drew on the American radical tradition of resistance to authority. Blending his thought with that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Emma Goldman helped to dispel the myth that anarchism considered a European product, a doctrine alien to the United States, introduced by immigrants. From the American tradition of individualism, by the ideal of freedom of human beings both as individuals and as citizens, Emma Goldman took new impetus for his own conception of anarchism.
Solo l’anarchismo enfatizza l’importanza dell’individuo, le sue possibilità e bisogni in una società libera. L’anarchismo insiste sul fatto che il centro di gravità nella società è l’individuo, che egli debba pensare da sé, agire in libertà e vivere pienamente la propria vita.
Così scriveva Emma Goldman in un articolo del 1934 in cui faceva un bilancio della sua vita. L’anarchismo, il «meraviglioso ideale», «il grande fermento del pensiero», era la filosofia della piena espressione individuale e della «fusione armoniosa» di individuo e società (…)
La visione di Emma Goldman's "beautiful ideal" is a vision open to the possibility. The commitment of his whole life was to promote conditions for the development and expression of an inner life and creative in all aspects of life by counteracting the attempts of society to control individuals through coercive and destructive moral codes of personal ties and social distortions imposed natural impulses. The themes to which he turned his political struggle and to whom he dedicated his writings: freedom of speech, female independence, sexual freedom, birth control, workers' rights, education for freedom and critical thinking, in his opinion were closely related , inseparable aspects of one process that would lead to the development of strong individuality and independent, able to create new and freer forms of expression.
The way to live their lives according to the ideals of freedom, from the most intimate relations with others, to Emma Goldman was an end in itself and a crucial aspect of social change (...) Of the twelve essays
chosen as an illustration of his thought, the result of "the effort of the mind and soul," five were dedicated to women's issues: the issue of suffrage, the prostituzione, del matrimonio, della sessualità e dell’amore.
Le sue convinzioni radicali su questi argomenti apparvero ai contemporanei ben più pericolose delle idee che giustificavano la violenza rivoluzionaria e neppure nel movimento anarchico esse erano pienamente accolte, bensì considerate questioni di secondaria importanza, se non di vere e proprie deviazioni. È nota la conversazione di Emma Goldman con Kropotkin durante la quale l’anarchico russo le chiese se «valesse la pena perdere tanto tempo a discutere di sesso» e la sua raccomandazione rivolta alle anarchiche americane affinché dessero la priorità nella loro azione politica alla liberazione dei lavoratori (…)
A differenza della maggior parte delle suffragiste, Emma Goldman era convinta che l’indipendenza femminile non si sarebbe realizzata in seguito a miglioramenti economici o a concessioni dall’alto, ma avrebbe preso le mosse da una rigenerazione interiore, da una trasformazione del modo di pensare.
Una tale impostazione rivela la consapevolezza della natura complessa del dominio, una costrizione che si esercita in ogni aspetto della vita: sui bisogni materiali, sui corpi, sulla mente e sulla condotta. Il dominio è anche un modo di porsi di fronte all’esperienza sociale e personale che soffoca la vita, distorce la personalità degli individui, conduce alla omologazione delle idee e alla passività.
Opporsi al dominio in tutte le sue forme implicava a process of liberation from external constraints and internal, required that to break the cycle of dependence - economic, psychological and emotional - so they could demonstrate and express their own wishes and inclinations. In this process, issues of sexuality and reproduction are vital, particularly for women, oppressed by the patriarchal family and the moral puritan.
Emma Goldman's belief about the relationship between personal liberation and social change placed in the open violation of the suffragist movement. Women should have free themselves from their "inner tyrants' and not expect the emancipation from participation in parliamentary politics," corrupter of the personality and beliefs. " Such a radical antisuffragismo was not unanimous, even among feminists, anarchists, some of whom saw in the voting for the right of women to expression and therefore a step towards the affirmation of their dignity.
 |
According to Emma Goldman was in first way of life la propria vita da parte delle sostenitrici del suffragio a dimostrare che la via da loro indicata era sbagliata. Il rifiuto delle convenzioni sociali, infatti, aveva condotto molte di loro ad escludere dalla propria vita le relazioni di intimità con gli uomini. Un messaggio di rinuncia, una scelta di impoverimento della propria vita affettiva da cui non poteva scaturire alcuna emancipazione (…)
Un altro motivo di contrasto con le suffragiste era legato al tema della differenza di genere. «La mia divergenza con le femministe [...] sta nel fatto che la maggior parte di loro vede la propria schiavitù come qualcosa di distinto dal resto del genere umano». Malgrado tutte le teorie politiche ed economiche che si occupano delle differenze Fundamental among the various groups of the human species, despite differences of class and race, despite all the artificial lines of demarcation between human rights and those of the woman, for my part I am convinced that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and reunite in a perfect blend (The tragedy of women's emancipation).
One of the main arguments advanced by the suffragists in favor of the women's vote was based on the conviction of their moral superiority. If women had been able to express themselves through the ballot box - they say - if they could pass on feminine values \u200b\u200bin society for the care and protection of life, would have contributed to free life in society from the evils that afflict it.
the contrary - according to Emma Goldman - men and women did not represent antagonistic worlds, the duality of the sexes was an absurd notion, a mean separation. Women were not better than men and would not succeed where the men had failed. The disappointing results of women's suffrage in the social sphere and politics in countries where women had won the right to vote, were to prove it.
The rejection of the premises of the movement for suffrage led Emma Goldman not to compete with reflection on the contemporary feminist gender difference. Although the overall movement for suffrage was a movement of middle-class women, conservative and puritanical, it lacked a current feminist who based his analysis on the gender gap and moved to a radical critique of industrial society, militarism, the sexual exploitation of women, domestic violence.
The emphasis on the necessity of the encounter between men and women, on common humanity, on the artificial divisions and aversion to any form of Puritanism can explain such an understatement that led to Emma Goldman to limit his own arguments. In fact, when it refers to women's experiences, not defines and analyzes them. 'Femininity', 'maternal instinct', 'feminine soul', 'deep emotions of a real woman, in love and mother "are expressions that could appear conservative because they were not accompanied by a reflection on the specificity of women, which could not be circumvented simply .
Likewise, his penetrating criticism of the current concept of emancipation, and outer surface, an emancipation that ended with a claim equal empty and uncritical, as "the privilege of becoming a judge, jailer, Executioner," or to "become an automaton from employment ', stop at the lack of definition of the different process of liberation in man and in women (...) So
Emma Goldman was far from the thinking of middle-class suffragists, as she felt close to the experience of women of the working classes. The essays reveal the theme of prostitution. In these writings
his analysis is acute, penetrating, radical, provocative. It treats prostitution to marital relationships, identify its root causes not only economic factors but also ignorance and inferiority in which the girls were required, prejudice against them. The girls are defined as "victims of morality", that is hypocritical bigot who considered prostitution a need or a vice women.
Again, his critics will stop in front of the gender gap. After stating that prostitution "sucks the life blood of both men and women," his attention is fixed on one who is a prostitute and also analyzes the distortion of sex drive, arousal caused by the particular work in the crowded dormitories factories and to frequenting places of entertainment at low cost. Distortion of sex drive in men, a theme that other feminists of her time would be addressed, Emma Goldman makes no reference.
Rejecting simplistic contrasts between men and women, the desire to lambast the puritanical hypocrisy, conducono Emma Goldman ad eludere alcune tematiche cruciali dei rapporti tra i generi. Per queste ragioni il suo appello alla liberazione femminile appare talvolta volontaristico, quasi incurante degli ostacoli che le donne avrebbero dovuto affrontare per conquistare la dignità necessaria a rivendicare la propria indipendenza e tradisce una certa insofferenza per coloro che non seguivano il suo esempio.
Attraverso i suoi scritti, le sue conferenze e l’autobiografia Emma Goldman voleva portare un messaggio e offrire un modello, dimostrare che la vita delle donne poteva essere libera ed emotionally satisfying. The text of a conference in 1911 to Mary Wollstonecraft, to his desire to experience marital relations revolutionary rebellion against the authoritarian constraints, the temperament, is particularly illuminating picture of himself that Emma Goldman and the spirit with which he approached women's issues. Emma Goldman was one of the few feminists to refer to Mary Wollstonecraft, whose work soon fell silent as a result of his life "scandalous" and its conformity to the challenges that are harmful to the cause emancipationist. Emma Goldman on Mary Wollstonecraft was reflected, he saw in it a tragic figure, a pioneer of the modern concept di femminilità la cui vita e il cui pensiero la collocavano al di là della capacità di comprensione dei contemporanei (…)
Come Mary Wollstonecraft, Emma Goldman in diverse fasi della vita fu travolta dalla passione per un uomo, una passione che sentiva come un limite alla sua libertà e che la sua ragione rifiutava. La tensione tra libertà e reciprocità, tra il desiderio di completa indipendenza e quello della sicurezza di un legame, tra le sue convinzioni sul libero amore e l’incapacità di liberarsi dalla gelosia, fu un vissuto lacerante. Lo rivelano l’autobiografia e soprattutto le lettere inedite. Così scriveva a Ben Reitman nel 1909: Non ho il diritto di portare un messaggio agli altri quando there is no message in my soul. I have no right to speak of freedom because I became an abject slave in love . Reflections
most radical anti-monogamy and jealousy, such as those contained in the conference Jealousy, its causes and possible treatment, were processed in the most turbulent periods of his love relationships, when he was conducting an internal struggle to overcome those feelings that criticized publicly. The exhortations to live a free life that appealed to his uditrici, his appeals to the will, were the same as that addressed in order hurting herself.
In 1931, he wrote to Alexander Berkman: "In the struggle that tore me every time I had to choose between my love for a man and my ideas, invariably my ideas and my passion have not decided on my way. " The fact is that we have no choice, he wrote, again with Alexander Berkman in 1925, "the impulse toward freedom, which leads the struggle for a higher ideal, is so great and compelling that we can not resist." The ideal of a future anarcofemminista, a time when everyone would be free in love and work, can make themselves fully human and creative individuals capable of producing real social wealth (...) Such was the
" beautiful ideal "to which he devoted his life and that makes it intolerant of any meanness, every political perspective restricted, which animated his scathing criticism and led to his intransigence.
Emma Goldman has left us a heritage complex, through his life and his theoretical work has contributed to a feminist dimension to anarchism and libertarian dimension to feminism. His conviction of the interdependence between social change and collective interior and what individuals deserve to be taken, valued at its full value, enriched by the experience of our lives.
0 comments:
Post a Comment