I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another [hu] man, nor ask another [hu]man to live for mine. Missing citation…
In the United States feminism is often shrouded in two categories, left and right wing, that fall into a spectrum of politics. Most people associate feminism with leftist movements, bra burning and man hating. The movement to many is a collectivist one which sets women together as a unit aiming towards the benefit of the whole. Collectivism is an outlook that places emphasis on a necessary interdependence among humans. Subsequently, many view feminism as necessarily being a collectivist movement. Individualist feminists, like the name seems to imply, maintain a focus on the individual and aim to hold individual strides at highest regards. Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged challenges the notion that people need rely on each other to be society’s productive members. As John Galt’s mantra goes, people should swear by their lives even that they will not live their lives for the sake of another person or allow another person to do so for his or herself.
Finding feminist elements within Rand presents the individual with confronting the notions in place about traditional feminism and stripping away conventions people typically attribute to movements in general. Due to the variety of feminists existing in the present as well as those who have influenced the movements in the past, and the generational differences between those finding themselves more prone to ideas in separate waves, it is difficult to have that a-ha moment with Atlas Shrugged and suggest it as a motivating force for all feminists. To include Atlas Shrugged in our feminist canon we have to break conventional bondag...
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... standards and even refuses to join the Utopia of Gult’s Gulch. If I were to compile a list for a women’s studies course, I would certainly add the novel Atlas Shrugged to the pulpit and expose students to Rand’s notions of individualism and use Dagny Taggert to put emphasis on importance of individual accomplishment, which can be fairly liberating in itself.
Works Cited
Feminist Second Thoughts about Free Agency Author(s): Paul Benson
Source: Hypatia, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 47-64
Ayn Rand and Feminism: An Unlikely Alliance
Mimi Gladstein
Psyching out Ayn Rand
Barbara Grizzuti
Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand Mimi Gladstein
“An Answer to Readers (About a Woman President),”
The Objectivist, Dec. 1968, 1
article “The Actuality of Ayn Rand” by Slavoj Žižek
Berry Vackers Third Wave Aesthos
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Many people have trouble being apart of a society. These troubles come from trying to fit in, which is also known as conforming. Another trouble is trying to express one’s own style with one’s own opinion. This is a trouble due to the fact that many people have the fear of being frowned upon when being the black sheep of the group if one’s opinion does not correspond with other opinions. This is where one’s own sense of who they are, individuality, and trying to fit in, conformity, can get confused. A nickname for conformity is “herd behavior” which is the name of an article where the author relates animals that herd with people that conform. Many people have a different philosophy of this topic which will be expressed in this essay. An important
Anthem by Ayn Rand is considered a dystopian novel. The characters live in a society where everything is bad, and they have no control over their life or destiny. The book is about a man, Equality 7-2521, who breaks all the laws of his society and dares to be different. The book is in first person and designed to seem like journal entries.
The word collectivism often makes people cringe. Overall, there is a general fear of not being able to make personal decisions in America. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, collectivism can be defined as; emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity (“Collectivism”). In Anthem, Ayn Rand describes an extreme collectivist society. Although Anthem’s society seems extremely surreal, aspects of its collectivist society closely mirror today’s society.
Ayn Rand's Anthem shows us her view of our world united under what seems to be communist rule. For example their view of right and wrong; which Anthem portrays is a system of very strict rules which mainly make sure that everyone is involved in a collective role within the society in this system no one is considered an individual or that they can even think as an individual.
It is a rare conception where a human being is completely and utterly alone. One problem we tend to overlook due to our primitive ideals of staying as a group, is the fact of us becoming solely to that group. In the book Anthem ,by Ayn Rand, a man named Equality 7-2521 sees this problem evolve and how it becomes a nuisance to his society. The book has made me open my mind up to the ideals of doing things for yourself and not always for those around you. The feeling of the story showing a world where many are brought down for being unique and talented hurts me as I imagine a time where all are mere specs of the world. The book hits the hard points of what can easily go wrong with our society if we decide to go over the line. I can see a life
The Fountainhead provided and continues to provide a powerful inspiration to the individualist movement in America, and throughout the world. More than any other single work, The Fountainhead revived popular enthusiasm for a way of thinking, and a way of life, that in 1943 was regarded by virtually every sector of intellectual opinion as outmoded. Ayn Rand's courageous challenge to accepted ideas was rendered still more courageous by her willingness to state her individualist premises in the clearest terms and to defend the most radical implications that could be drawn from them.
“I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (Rand 979). The last lines of John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged declare the fundamental principle of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Her ideology plays an integral role in her literary pieces, functioning as the motor driving the actions, goals, and beliefs of the protagonists. From the first strains of Objectivism established during her childhood in Russia, Ayn Rand would develop and cultivate her ideas further in each novel, culminating in her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. We the Living, The Fountainhead, and Anthem share the theme of Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead and Anthem would join the masterpiece as staples of the Objectivist and Libertarian ideologies (Smith 384). Nothing could pose a greater contrast when presented in juxtaposition with Rand’s doctrine than the Communism of her childhood. Ayn Rand’s experiences living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic led her to create Objectivism; through her fictional works, she showcases her philosophy which is centered on the struggle of the individual versus the collective by emphasizing different aspects in each of her novels.
Ayn Rand is easily one of the most controversial, provocative and rejected philosophical minds of the 20th century. She is completely absent from Donald M. Borchert’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy where only a short reference to Rand’s compatriot Vladimir Solovyov’s “…objective forms of moral life” (125) even hints at any thing remotely to do with Rand. Rand’s utter rejection at the hands of the mainstream philosophical community stems from her controversial viewpoints on various topics and her fierce criticism of intellectuals
In the novel, Anthem, written by Ayn Rand takes place when mankind has entered another dark age. A man named Equality 7-2521 lives in a society where he struggles to live equal within the brotherhood. In the world he lives in people are told they exist only for the sake of serving society, and have no other purpose. Therefore, each individual is assigned a vocation as a permanent life career which determines who they socialize and live with. However, Equality being very different from his brothers, believes in individualism and rejects the collectivism society around him. The concept of individualism vs collectivism is portrayed in the story because individuality is unknown to the people where no one is unique or excellent in any way. The people
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Women and men fear the thought of an empowered woman and the thought of feminism. Women fear that will be punished by men if they stand against them and fear that being a feminist will make them cruel and lonely. Men fear that women will one day rise and surpass them. But it is with these women that great change can come. Being a feminist does not require a person to hate men nor does it isolate a person from the rest of the world. In both texts we witnessed that there are people who reinforce conventional views of gender roles and those who challenge them. The life is a feminist is challenging but much more rewarding at the same time.
Banner, Lois W. Women in Modern America a Brief History. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
As women, those of us who identify as feminists have rebelled against the status quo and redefined what it means to be a strong and powerful woman. But at what cost do these advances come with?... ... middle of paper ... ... Retrieved April 12, 2014, from http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/whatisfem.htm Bidgood, J. 2014, April 8 -.
Feminism is a perspective that views gender as one of the most important bases of the structure and organization of the social world. Feminists argue that in most known societies this structure has granted women lower status and value, more limited access to valuable resources, and less autonomy and opportunity to make choices over their lives than it has granted men. (Sapiro 441)
Throughout history, women have remained subordinate to men. Subjected to the patriarchal system that favored male perspectives, women struggled against having considerably less freedom, rights, and having the burdens society placed on them that had so ingrained the culture. This is the standpoint the feminists took, and for almost 160 years they have been challenging the “unjust distribution of power in all human relations” starting with the struggle for equality between men and women, and linking that to “struggles for social, racial, political, environmental, and economic justice”(Besel 530 and 531). Feminism, as a complex movement with many different branches, has and will continue to be incredibly influential in changing lives. Feminist political ideology focuses on understanding and changing political philosophies for the betterment of women.