week 2 seminar notes
4/16/17
We largely discussed essays within part 2 of “Red Emma Speaks which carry themes of education, religion, atheism, morals, gender normatives, sex and love.
I brought up the modern school and how we could potentially see a revitalization of radical education in this day and age, beyond zines and affinity group discussions. Punkin brought up an education establishment in Seattle that started as a squat before the city gave them the space. Though not explicitly anarchist, they teach a very alternative curriculum.
I read a part of Dostoyevsky’s story he wrote on his prison cell wall about the devil taking a priest to homes and workplaces of working people, and explaining to him how he speaks of hell in other places when hell in on earth. Emma has a quote quote reading it is the Earth, not heaven thats man must rescue in order to be saved. Theses words carry an added weight no aways with climate change threatening our species very survival.
We then talked about Goldman’s take on family life in a religious, capitalist society. Religion tells people, man was made in god’s image, so parents get passed along that same line of thinking to raising kids, how they view their children being made in their image. This creates the morals and rigidity that suffocate an adolescent into uniformity. She speaks of a child’s natural tendency to rebel against a parent’s view. I brought up how this could be viewed as an innate biological mechanism to safeguard a species against multigenerational uniformity.
We discussed a part in the documentary where Goldman and Reitman ware criminally prosecuted for advocating birth control. He talked about the flaws within sex education in the U.S from both religious and secular modes and our own personal experiences taking sex ed classes in grade school. Safe sex is brought up marginally, or not at all in some cases. There is also no mention of pleasure in any curriculum.
Bucklin, M. (2004). Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman. U.S.: PBS.
Motmakt. (2011, September 7). Noam Chomsky on libertarian socialism.Youtube.
Shulman, A. (1996). Red Emma Speaks. Humanities Press