Emma Goldman

This chapter discusses resistance in Emma Goldman’s (1869-1940) anarchism. The introduction accounts for her reputation, indicates her detachment from conventional political theory and considers the criticism that she failed to investigate race as a category of oppression. The second section identifies two concepts, ‘love with open eyes’ and ‘the spirit of revolt’, to structure her concept of resistance and explain the gaps and silences in her thought. The third examines Goldman’s understanding of political theory as a practice informed by experience and uses it to explore her concepts of power and emancipation, specifically, her construction of the relationship between class power and women’s oppression. The final section discusses ‘slavery’ and ‘slavishness’ to show how Goldman used rights to advocate resistance to domination. The argument is that her love of America reflected a New World ideal that the US Constitution had sullied and that her embrace of revolt highlighted the futility of struggles for inclusion.