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

Considering Emma

“…There is a veritable explosion of interest in Goldman contemporarily, partly in combination with a more general interest in anarchism, partly through a postcolonial or transnational feminist politics interested in finding antecedents to intersectional, anti-nationalist and anti-capitalist global politics. These strands continue a long tradition of claiming Goldman for a particular politics throughout her life – the media was consistently interested in Goldman during her lifetime, describing her appearance in particular in graphic and often contradictory detail (Frankel, 1996) – and the subsequent iconographic status she has attained on t-shirts and other paraphernalia (Ferguson, 2011: 76ff.). They also reference earlier feminist engagement with and attachment to Goldman, within which writers such as Candace Falk (1984), Bonnie Haaland (1993), Alix Kate Shulman (2007 [1982]) and Alice Wexler (1985/1986) sought to frame her as a feminist heroine: indeed, for Shulman Goldman was a ‘militant feminist foremother’ (2007 [1982]: 242).…”