Humanities & Social Sciences
May 2026
Voltairine de Cleyre’s transnational anarchism
by Rita Filanti
Despite a growing interest in her life and work, Voltairine de Cleyre's contribution to anarchist studies, women studies, and American literature is still mostly unacknowledged. Described by Emma Goldman as 'the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced', de Cleyre authored poems, prose sketches, lectures and translations which radiate with her vision of the world, meticulous use of language, and iconoclastic vigor. Drawing on her copious correspondence with family members, friends and comrades, this monograph provides novel insight into the most significant events of her life while investigating the aesthetic concern characterizing all of her writing. Constantly shifting across languages, she established cosmopolitan networks within immigrant communities at home and beyond the ocean, always believing, until her untimely death, in universal solidarity and the ultimate non-existence of national, ethnic and linguistic barriers.
