What do you think?
Rate this book
Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre — Anarchist, Feminist, Genius
Emma Goldman called Voltairine de Cleyre "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced." Yet her writings and speeches on anarchism and feminism--as radical, passionate, and popular at the time as Goldman's--are virtually unknown today. This important book brings de Cleyre's eloquent and incisive work out of undeserved obscurity. Twenty-one essays are reprinted here, including her classic works: "Anarchism and the American Tradition," "The Dominant Idea," and "Sex Slavery." Three biographical essays are also included: two new ones by Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell, and a rarely reprinted one from Emma Goldman.
At a time when the mainstream women's movement asked only for the right to vote and rarely challenged the status quo, de Cleyre demanded an end to sex roles, called for economic independence for women, autonomy within and without marriage, and offered a radical critique of the role of the Church and State in oppressing women. In today's world of anti-globalization actions, de Cleyre's anarchist ideals of local self-rule, individual conscience, and decentralization of power still remain fresh and relevant.
At a time when the mainstream women's movement asked only for the right to vote and rarely challenged the status quo, de Cleyre demanded an end to sex roles, called for economic independence for women, autonomy within and without marriage, and offered a radical critique of the role of the Church and State in oppressing women. In today's world of anti-globalization actions, de Cleyre's anarchist ideals of local self-rule, individual conscience, and decentralization of power still remain fresh and relevant.
331 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
18 people are currently reading
703 people want to read
About the author
Voltairine de Cleyre
88 books106 followersVoltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement. De Cleyre was initially drawn to individualist anarchism but evolved through mutualism to an "anarchism without adjectives." She believed that any system was acceptable as long as it did not involve force. However, according to anarchist author Iain McKay, she embraced the ideals of stateless communism.[1] She was a colleague of Emma Goldman, with whom she maintained a relationship of respectful disagreement on many issues. Many of her essays were in the Collected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, published posthumously by Mother Earth in 1914.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 24, 2009
Although I cannot help but laugh at the audacity of the title (as with any book featuring this word, the "genius" bit always seems uncritically pretentious), there are some great essays here. I love this passage from the essay "Why I Am An Anarchist":
"It is extremely hard for an American, who has been nursed in the traditions of the revolution, to realize the fact that that revolution must be classed precisely with others, and its value weighed and measured by its results, just as they are. I am an American myself, and was at one time as firmly attached to those traditions as any one can be; I believed that if there were any way to remedy the question of poverty the Constitution must necessarily afford the means to do it. It required long thought and many a dubious struggle between prejudice and reason before I was able to arrive at the conclusion that the political victory of America had been a barren thing: that a declaration of equal rights on paper, while an advance in human evolution in so far that at least it crystallized a vague ideal, was after all but an irony in the face of facts; that what people wanted to make them free was the right to things; that a "free country" in which all the productive tenures were already appropriated was not free at all; that any man who must wait the complicated working of a mass of unseen powers before he may engage in the productive labor necessary to get his food is the last thing but a free man; that those who do command these various resources and powers, and therefore the motions of their fellow-men, command likewise the manner of their voting, and that hence the reputed great safeguard of individual liberties, the ballot box, becomes but an added instrument of oppression in the hands of the possessor; finally, that the principle of majority rule itself, even granting it could ever be practicalized--which it could not on any large scale: it is always a real minority that governs in place of the nominal majority--but even granting it realizable, the thing itself is essentially pernicious; that the only desirable condition of society is one in which no one is compelled to accept an arrangement to which one has not consented."
"It is extremely hard for an American, who has been nursed in the traditions of the revolution, to realize the fact that that revolution must be classed precisely with others, and its value weighed and measured by its results, just as they are. I am an American myself, and was at one time as firmly attached to those traditions as any one can be; I believed that if there were any way to remedy the question of poverty the Constitution must necessarily afford the means to do it. It required long thought and many a dubious struggle between prejudice and reason before I was able to arrive at the conclusion that the political victory of America had been a barren thing: that a declaration of equal rights on paper, while an advance in human evolution in so far that at least it crystallized a vague ideal, was after all but an irony in the face of facts; that what people wanted to make them free was the right to things; that a "free country" in which all the productive tenures were already appropriated was not free at all; that any man who must wait the complicated working of a mass of unseen powers before he may engage in the productive labor necessary to get his food is the last thing but a free man; that those who do command these various resources and powers, and therefore the motions of their fellow-men, command likewise the manner of their voting, and that hence the reputed great safeguard of individual liberties, the ballot box, becomes but an added instrument of oppression in the hands of the possessor; finally, that the principle of majority rule itself, even granting it could ever be practicalized--which it could not on any large scale: it is always a real minority that governs in place of the nominal majority--but even granting it realizable, the thing itself is essentially pernicious; that the only desirable condition of society is one in which no one is compelled to accept an arrangement to which one has not consented."
August 23, 2020
the original essays in this book speak for themselves in a clear and beautiful way. Especially in 2020 some of these essays speak to, and describe, the current American moment too closely. The essays by the editors of this collection are rather lackluster and their scholarship could have been better organized and edited with a keener eye towards repetition and tone. Overall an outstanding collection of essays.
Read
October 9, 2014Voltairine de Cleyre is a brilliant anarchist thinker who doesn't get enough attention. I think the clear way she tried to unify and accept different schools of anarchy is what impressed me most about her.
December 18, 2007
amazing woman ... what guts and insight!
February 1, 2008
finally got my hands on it.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews