Whatever Happened to "Red Emma"? Emma Goldman, from Alien Rebel to American Icon

Abstract

Over the past quarter of a century, the anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) has assumed a unique position in American politics and culture. One would be hardpressed to find another woman of the past who enjoys her privileged status . . . who is emblazoned on as many tee-shirts and postcards, one observer commented a decade ago.' The 1960s generation rediscovered and embraced her as a voice for its political concerns and cultural sensibilities, from the struggle against the draft to women's equality, free love, and defiance of authorityany authority. Radical feminists, the first in the women's movement to adopt her as an icon, sought to emulate her self-assertive political militancy no less than to embrace her gender critique. In later decades, the impassioned spirit of the 1960s perhaps waned, but the process of canonizing Goldman only accelerated. The deradicalization of the generation who rescued Goldman from collective amnesia facilitated new possibilities for renderings of her, yielding a surplus of meaning and the drifting of Goldman into unexpected corners of the political and public arena. By the 1990s the icon had fractured, offering an appropriate (or an appropriated) version for myriad constituencies. Goldman may be presented as a fighter for free speech, a communitarian, a libertarian, an anticommunist, an extreme individualist, a precursor of modern feminism, a true subversive, a harmless visionary expelled for voicing innocent ideas, a suffering victim, a cheerful, life-affirming woman, or an amusing, sharp-tongued, Jewish grandmother. There is the tough politico Goldman and the nurturing, gentle spirit Emma. Devotees still insist on referring to her on a first-name basis, deliberately inverting the once demeaning social practice of depriving women of surname formality or simply expressing a deeply felt sense of intimacy.2