Author ｜
Rachel Hui-chi Hsu
Abstract ｜
China in the 1920s saw the rising tide of free love/marriage and new sexual morality imported from abroad as it underwent sociopolitical upheavals. Anarchism, which had greatly inspired intellectuals and students with its antimilitarism and cultural iconoclasm in the 1910s, began to lose its edge in rivalry with the National Party and the Communist Party during the next decade. Refusing to collaborate with these two political parties, Chinese young anarchists strove to contribute to social revolution in their own radical, anarchistic way. How did they manage to do it? This article examines the characteristics and significance of Chinese anarchists’ discourses in light of their translation and adaptation of the sex radicalism of Russian American anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940). I chart the cross-cultural circulation of Goldman’s anarchism since the early twentieth century, with the focus on the rendition of her idea of free love by the Chinese anarchists in the 1920s. By doing so, I showcase the revised sex radicalism of Chinese anarchists in the process of their dialectic thinking and criticism of Goldman’s free love. Their dialectic thinking of Goldman’s free love, this article reveals, could only be grasped in the context of sociopolitical change in 1920s China as anarchists sought their breakthrough in their pursuit of social revolution.
keywords ｜
anarchism, Emma Goldman, anti-love theory, discourses on sexual love, the 1920s