Autobiography as a discourse of identity and resistanceEmma Goldman's Living my life

Abstract

This essay analyzes the anarchist Emma Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life (1931), as a discourse of identity and resistance. Within the different descriptions of her many resistances to any kind of authority, Goldman’s autobiographical discourse can itself be perceived as an act of resistance: one in which she constructs her identity by confronting the demonic image that the Government and the press of the United States had previously portrayed of her. Thus, Living My Life can be studied as an example of the potential of autobiography as a place of resistance, a place where the autobiographical subject can become an agent of change, a place where the systems of signification of a society can change. In the case of Living My Life, a change in conceptions about politics and human relations, or about the role of women in turn-of-the-century United States can be seen to be a possibility