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Emma Goldman est une anarchiste russe née le 27 juin 1869 à Kowno et morte le 14 mai 1940 à Toronto Canada, connue pour son activisme politique, ses écrits et ses discours radicaux libertaires et féministes. Elle a joué un rôle majeur dans le développement de la philosophie anarchiste en Amérique du Nord et en Europe dans la première moitié du XXe siècle.

Née à Kowno appartenant alors à l'Empire russe, elle émigre aux États-Unis en 1885 et vit à New York, où elle rejoint dès 1889 le mouvement anarchiste en plein essor après le massacre de Haymarket Square. Elle devient vite une écrivaine et conférencière renommée, captivant des milliers de personnes sur la philosophie anarchiste, les droits des femmes ou les luttes sociales.

Avec son amant et ami de toujours, Alexander Berkman, elle organise, en 1892, une tentative d'assassinat de l'industriel Henry Frick, conçu comme un acte de propagande par le fait. Bien que Frick ne soit que blessé, Berkman est condamné à vingt-deux ans de réclusion. Elle est emprisonnée à plusieurs reprises dans les années qui suivent, pour « incitation à l'émeute » et distribution illégale d'informations sur le contrôle des naissances. En 1906, elle fonde le journal Mother Earth, dont elle assure la rédaction en chef jusqu'à son interdiction en 1917. La même année, avec Berkman, elle est condamnée à deux ans de prison pour propagande antimilitariste contre la conscription. Ils sont ensuite expulsés vers la Russie.

Initialement, elle soutient la révolution bolchevique, mais s'oppose rapidement au Parti communiste, en prenant notamment la défense des anarchistes victimes de la répression. En 1921, elle fuit l'URSS et raconte son expérience, en 1923, sous le titre : My Disillusionment in Russia.

Pendant son séjour en France, en 1928, elle rédige son autobiographie, Living my Life, publiée en 1931.

De 1936 à 1938, lors de la guerre civile et à l'invitation de la Confédération nationale du travail, elle se rend à plusieurs reprises en Espagne pour soutenir la révolution sociale. Elle meurt à Toronto le 14 mai 1940 à l'âge de 70 ans.

Pour certains, Emma Goldman est une « femme rebelle », libertaire et libre penseuse. Pour ses détracteurs, c'est une avocate de l'assassinat politique et de la révolution violente. Ses écrits et ses conférences touchent des domaines aussi divers que la prison, l'athéisme, la liberté d'expression, le militantisme, le mariage ou l’homosexualité. Bien qu'elle ne partage pas la revendication de la première vague du féminisme en faveur du droit de vote des femmes, elle développe une nouvelle réflexion intégrant davantage les femmes et la sexualité dans la philosophie anarchiste.

Dans les années 1970, après des décennies d'oubli, son parcours est revisité par des chercheurs féministes ou anarchistes. En 1979, ses Mémoires sont traduits et publiés en français sous le titre L'Épopée d'une anarchiste. New York 1886 - Moscou 1920. Ils sont réédités régulièrement depuis. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. juin 1868 – 14. mai 1940   •   Autres noms ఎమ్మా గోల్డ్‌మేన్, ايما گولڊمين
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Emma Goldman citations célèbres

“L’étroitesse de la conception existante de l’indépendance de la femme et de son émancipation; la crainte d’aimer un homme qui n’est pas son égal au point de vue social; la crainte que l’amour la dépouillera de sa liberté ou de son indépendance; la terreur que l’amour ou la joie de la maternité nuise à l’exercice de sa profession, toutes ces appréhensions font de la femme moderne émancipée une vestale par force, devant laquelle passe la vie – avec ses grandes douleurs qui purifient et ses joies profondes qui ravissent – sans que son âme en soit touchée ou entraînée.”

Emma Goldman

texte de 1906 (traduction de 1914)

“Gustave Hervé, un autre grand antipatriote, considère le patriotisme comme une superstition, bien plus dangereuse, brutale et inhumaine que la religion. La superstition de la religion provient de l’incapacité de l’homme à expliquer les phénomènes naturels. En effet, lorsque les hommes primitifs entendaient le roulement du tonnerre ou voyaient des éclairs, ils ne pouvaient leur trouver d’explication. Ils en concluaient donc que, derrière ces phénomènes, se cachait une force plus puissante qu’eux-mêmes. De même, les hommes ont vu une entité surnaturelle dans la pluie et dans les différentes manifestations de la nature. Le patriotisme, quant à lui, est une superstition créée artificiellement et entretenue par tout un réseau de mensonges et de faussetés; une superstition qui enlève à l’homme tout respect pour lui-même et toute dignité, et accroît son arrogance et son mépris. En effet, mépris, arrogance et égoïsme sont les trois éléments fondamentaux du patriotisme.”

Emma Goldman

texte de 1911

“Le patriotisme […] est une superstition créée artificiellement et entretenue par tout un réseau de mensonges et de faussetés; une superstition qui enlève à l’homme tout respect pour lui-même et toute dignité, et accroît son arrogance et son mépris. En effet, mépris, arrogance et égoïsme sont les trois éléments fondamentaux du patriotisme.”

Emma Goldman

Patriotism: A Menace To Liberty

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Si je ne peux pas danser sur ce thème, c’est que ce n’est pas ma révolution.”

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman: Citations en anglais

“The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief… So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.”

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Emma Goldman

"Mother Earth" (1911)

“The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.”

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Emma Goldman

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

“As to killing rulers, it depends entirely on the position of the ruler. If it is the Russian tsar, I most certainly believe in dispatching him to where he belongs. If the ruler is as ineffectual as an American president, it is hardly worth the effort. There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth. (p. 207)”

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Emma Goldman livre Living My Life

Living My Life (1931)

“Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.”

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Emma Goldman

p. 219 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2162/2162-h/2162-h.htm#emancipation
The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation (1906)

“It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe.”

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Emma Goldman

The Philosophy of Atheism (1916)

“What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?”

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Emma Goldman

What is Patriotism? (1908)

“Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.”

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Emma Goldman

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

“Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The Kropotkins, the Perovskayas, the Breshkovskayas, and hosts of others repudiated wealth and station and refused to serve King Mammon. They went among the people, not to lift them up but themselves to be lifted up, to be instructed, and in return to give themselves wholly to the people. That accounts for the heroism, the art, the literature of Russia, the unity between the people, the mujik and the intellectual. That to some extent explains the literature of all European countries, the fact that the Strindbergs, the Hauptmanns, the Wedekinds, the Brieux, the Mirbeaus, the Steinlins and Rodins have never dissociated themselves from the people.”

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Emma Goldman

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

“When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.”

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Emma Goldman

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

“In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values.
The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood — these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society — the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The people are asleep; they remain indifferent. They forge their own chains and do the bidding of their masters to crucify their Christs.”

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Emma Goldman livre Living My Life

Source: Living My Life (1931), p. 304

“I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work”

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Emma Goldman

"Arrest in Chicago of Emma Goldman, Preacher of Anarchy." http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-09-11/ed-1/seq-1/, San Francisco Call 11 Sept. 1901 The San Francisco call. (San Francisco [Calif.]), 11 Sept. 1901. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.]

“The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.”

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Emma Goldman

p. 219 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2162/2162-h/2162-h.htm#emancipation
The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation (1906)

“To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.”

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Emma Goldman

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

“Those who will not worship at the shrine of money, need not hope for recognition. On the other hand, they will also not have to think other people’s thoughts or wear other people’s political clothes. They will not have to proclaim as true that which is false, nor praise that as humanitarian which is brutal.”

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Emma Goldman

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fullfilled only through man's subordination.”

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Emma Goldman livre Anarchism and Other Essays

Anarchism: What it Really Stands For http://books.google.com/books?id=U5ZYAAAAMAAJ&q="Anarchism+is+the+only+philosophy+which+brings+to+man+the+consciousness+of+himself+which+maintains+that+God+the+State+and+society+are+non-existent+that+their+promises+are+null+and+void+since+they+can+be+fullfilled+only+through+man's+subordination"&pg=PA58#v=onepage (1910)

“The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.”

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Emma Goldman

What is Patriotism? (1908)

“This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power.”

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Emma Goldman livre My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder…
Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.”

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Emma Goldman

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

“Those who are placed in positions which demand the surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to “arrive,” no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means to “arrive,” we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who have “arrived,” as the final authority on all matters, whereas in reality their “arrival” is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real and ideal. The “arrived” artists are dead souls upon the intellectual horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never “arrive.” Their life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls “untimely,” because everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is always doomed to be untimely.”

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Emma Goldman

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

“"Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Samuel Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.”

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Emma Goldman

What is Patriotism? (1908)

“Atheism … in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.”

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Emma Goldman

The Philosophy of Atheism (1916)

“America had declared war with Spain…. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim. I could not join them. I was sure that no one, be it individual or government, engaged in enslaving and exploiting at home, could have the integrity or the desire to free people in other lands.”

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Emma Goldman livre Living My Life

Source: Living My Life (1931), p. 226

“Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day…. The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.”

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Emma Goldman

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

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