A Rumination on Commodification and Letters

Letters, as a form of direct communication, are alarmingly indirect. Specifically, we often consider letters to be an independent object, instead of exclusively seeing it as it serves as a method of communication. This misunderstanding of the nature of a letter can be observed by looking at how scholars tend to lump letters in with other semiautobiographical writings, such as diaries and journals, in attempts to study historical and literary figures. However, whilst proposing personal letters as a genre of their own, Margaretta Jolly argues that:

"while the familiar letter may be valued for its personality, authenticity or intimacy, the meaning of those effects is specific not just to time and place but addressee. We might say that the literal correspondence between the writer and reader provides the letter’s epistemological foundation, unsettling the linguistic correspondence between writing and world, signifier and signifier, of more public genres… (Jolly and Stanley 92-3)"

Here, she challenges the study of letters as equivalent to diaries and journals because of their unique relationships between author and reader. However, implicit in her argument, is the fact that many scholars have already been driven to largely ignore the relational aspect of the letter and view them as a distinct historical object. She highlights how the addressee of a letter may affect the construction of the letter, which may influence the veracity of any information contained within the letter. Additionally, she recognizes how the relationship between the author and addressee of a letter is different than a purely private or purely public writing. But the process of treating these letters as a genre or autobiographical work begins the process of commodification. Though they recognize the role of the addressee, this is treated more as a potential source of bias than as a defining feature of a letter. The human addressee intended to interact with the letter is replaced with the concept of a reader.

As Marx defines it, commodification is the process of separating an object from the labor and consumption that originally contextualize it, instead contextualizing a commodity only by its relationship to other commodities--thus creating an economy of sorts. He states that “as a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other,” which can then be applied to the study of letters as a gene because of how these studies treat letters as a piece of writing which reflects almost solely on the writer, instead of an inherently relational medium (Marx). This separation becomes creates significantly more problems in situations of passing. Especially because people of color, especially Black folks, are systemically erased from telling their own stories, compressing the author and addressee of letters to an invisible force removes incredibly important context and nuance to matters of self-identity and the context of a letter.

As this extends to letters within a text, this entire project both relies on and contributes to the commodification of these letters. On one hand, we are interrogating how these letters are constructed as literary symbols and metaphors for passing--a process begun by the authors of these texts. However, in this interrogation, we further extricate these letters from their relational purpose, we further treat them as an object of their own instead of as a product of labor. This process makes sense, especially as we’re interested in how a letter operates within passing narratives regardless of their content. And, as authors treat letters as symbolic parallels to their characters, they begin this process themselves. But, especially since the processes of commodification and fetishization are so inherently linked, this is still something we need to be cognizant of. We need to recognize the bias we are bringing into this project, not only as white authors in the 21st century, but as critics who often separate the letters we’re analyzing from the labor (within their texts) which create them and the consumption they are meant for.

-BH