"Anarchy is the only philosophy that offers man self-awareness; that holds that God, the State, and society do not exist, that their promises are null and void, since they can only be fulfilled by man's subordination. Anarchy therefore teaches the unity of life; not only in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between individual and social instincts, any more than there is a conflict between the heart and the lungs.[...]The individual is the heart of society, preserving the essence of social life; society is the lung, distributing the element necessary to keep the vital essence (i.e., the individual) pure and strong." (Anarchy: What It Really Means, 1911. Italics mine.)
Anarchy as a teacher of the unity of life: this formula sums up in a nutshell the thought, life, and actions of Emma Goldman, an activist, writer, and theorist of anarchism born in Lithuania in 1869 and died in Canada in 1940, after spending much of her life in the United States and traveling the world, spreading anarchist ideas and practices everywhere.
"Unity of life" means observing and becoming aware of the profound and pervasive interconnection between lives, people, and the environment (natural and otherwise), an interconnection so visceral that it allows for no half measures: to be truly free, we must all be free, together. Therefore, the emancipation of the oppressed is not enough; Goldman's thought goes further: the liberation of each and every one. Freedom, therefore, as the basis for the full realization of Life, understood as vital energy, affectivity, and self-expression (recalling the vitalism of Nietzsche and others) and as practical, daily, and material life. In this regard, for Goldman, anarchy brings a triple liberation: "the liberation of the human mind from the control of religion; the liberation of the human body from the control of property; and liberation from the chains and restrictions of government." (Ibid.)
This vision of life, which today we would call intersectional, lies in the originality of Goldman's thought. However, he also defines anarchy in a more technical sense as "the philosophy of a new social order based on freedom, unrestricted by man-made laws; the theory that all forms of government are based on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as useless." (Ibid.)
Wanting to delve deeper into the intersectionality (ante litteram) of Goldman's thought, I share a reflection by Chiara Bottici, speaker at the dedicated meeting in the "A Philosopher a Month" series: Goldman lived for many years in the US, where mainstream feminism coincided with the suffrage movement, itself virtually monopolized by white, middle-class women demanding the right to vote. In this context, Goldman rejects a feminism that translates solely into the aspiration of women privileged by class and "race"/ethnicity to join the ranks of highly privileged, powerful white men. Goldman wanted more: she wanted everything. Bottici also explored the issue of American feminism, recalling that Native American tribes had forms of gynocracy that took the form of structures of female organization and self-organization through which women could express themselves and act politically. Throughout Native American tradition, therefore, the idea that women possessed sovereignty over themselves and the community never completely disappeared: this awareness survived even the atrocities of colonization, surviving in the collective consciousness and becoming a standard feminist foundation.
From this point on, Bottici elaborated on the mechanisms of control over bodies and genders as an essential element in the construction and maintenance of the sovereign state as we know it today. First, Bottici observes that in Native American tribes, the distinction between genders was fluid and changeable, and gender assignment was often based on dreams and not-as is the practice today-on a binary bodily sexualization. However, Bottici argues, these modes of gender distinction would be unthinkable in the modern era: starting in the seventeenth century, the sovereign state emerged as a political and economic power structure based on the accumulation of capital and resources by an institution that commands and controls a more or less vast territory in a homogeneous and widespread manner, in the sense of diffuse and pervasive. It is a system born in Europe and exported with colonization-for the USA, Bottici identifies the nineteenth century as the initial period of development of the sovereign state in the strict sense.
https://umanitanova.org/emma-goldman-lanarchia-come-insegnante-dellunita-della-vita-lo-stato-sovrano-come-strumento-del-sessogenere-sovrano/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #6-26 - Emma Goldman. Anarchy as a Teacher of the Unity of Life - The Sovereign State as an Instrument of Sovereign Sex-Gender (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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