The Adversity and Empathy of Emma Goldman

Abstract

Chapter 4 examines how Emma Goldman wrote her 1931 Living My Life to challenge the state authority that had deported her during the first Red Scare, turning inward before a global audience to analyze experiences in the family, factory, anarchist circles, prison, and in nursing. Through autobiography Goldman theorized two approaches to antiauthoritarian politics. Whereas an adversarial approach aimed to emancipate the people through targeting and removing agents of oppression, empathy would raise awareness of the people that suffer structural injustice. The chapter traces this shift in anarchist politics across Goldman’s descriptions of her assistance with the attempted murder of Henry Clay Frick and her response to the assassination of President William McKinley. Recognizing Goldman’s claim of experience elevates Living My Life among her anarcha-feminist essays and speeches, and it explains why she revealed her previously secret involvement with the attack on Frick though it made difficult her return to the United States.