Brandt, Letters, Signatures, Authenticity

I am teaching a persuasive letter in my English 120 classes this semester primarily as a way to teach genre, persuasive strategies, and rhetorical situations, but also to satisfy my interest in community involvement/discussion. Like the other assignments of the semester, at least among some of my students, one of the problems I run into with this unit is convincing my students that writing and sending letters to community leaders—be they political, business, religious, etc.—is a skill/knowledge with “real world” implications. I note the ways protests, boycotts, and even………letters can bring and have brought about change, and we talk about the importance of discussion and informed opinion in democratic systems of government. As a way of informing my teaching, I’ve also increased the amount of time I commit to such forms of involvement, sending letters and emails primarily to political representatives. A response that one of these representatives recently mailed to me, along with my teaching of the unit, then influenced my reading of one of our assignments this week—which brings me to Deborah Brandt’s “Who’s the President?”

Brandt’s discussion of ghostwriting offers an intriguing glimpse into an occupation with tremendous sociological and philosophical implications that I’d never contemplated before—Polanski didn’t really mine that territory in The Ghost Writer. Brandt’s essay, drawing from her experiences interviewing a variety of ghost writers, examines some of these implications, noting the different ways ghostwriting demonstrates some of the values associated with authorship, some of the ways literacy operates in personal and business relationships, and some of the more notable examples of the ways literacy and authorship are exploited and used to exploit. However, I was most struck by Brandt’s mention of “the symbolic value” of the author as demonstrated in organizational thank you letters: ghostwritten, printed on stationery, and sometimes signed by a president, sometimes signed with “a machine with a fountain pen rigged up to imitate the president’s signature” (560)—which brings me back to the letter that was sent to me.

Just as I assumed that the email I sent to Senator Conrad wouldn’t actually be read by him—though I imagine North Dakota is one of the easier states in which to fulfill such a responsibility—the letter that was sent to me in response offered a printed signature and the knowledge that “wnll” typed it. I assumed that Conrad would never read my letter, if not for the time commitment or monotony of the task, then at least someone like wnll simply throwing away my possibly paranoid screed about the NDAA and civil rights. However, the likelihood that the letter was ghostwritten in part or in whole, as a general response to the topic, and the fact that it offered no real signature, instead only an attempt to mimic a real signature and all that it means, now makes me certain that he never did. Putting aside how this type of action influences my students’ questioning of the “real world” applications of yet another writing assignment, I’m forced to consider how Senator Conrad hears from his constituents if not by letter, email, or phone. I’m sure this includes poll results and representations in media, which is disconcerting, but it also then leaves primarily political fundraisers, which is even more disconcerting, and public meetings, which are frequently avoided by politicians because they attract political extremists, as Minnesota Representative Collin Peterson suggested in 2009.

So, if this at least suggests how very little correspondence actually occurs between democratic representatives and their constituents, and how the authenticity or integrity of that correspondence is publicly questioned, how does this affect the way we trust and value personal, written communication? Echoing Brandt’s conclusions, do these examples of breakdowns or exploitations—as well as those in the world of ghostwriting—change your opinions? Does this show how easily authorship and writing can be used to exploit? And if so, does this change the way we view the author-function, perhaps not in the light of Foucault, who in part focused on the way it was used to control dissidence, but also as a way to authenticate communication and thus promote discussion and community?