Stephanie Smallwood and Understanding Commodification

In revisiting some of our assigned readings for the last two reaction papers, I have rediscovered my great appreciation for the work of Stephanie Smallwood. In both Smallwood readings that we discussed, Saltwater Slavery and “Commodified Freedom,” Smallwood highlights the underlying themes of racial slavery that have become the backbone for a lot of our class discussions.

The most resonant theme for my rationalization of American slavery has been commodification. Smallwood defines the term in “Commodified Freedom,” discussing how the word commodity developed to reference concrete objects that are “fetishized” within the market. She also discusses how the processes of commodification involve subjective processes of conceptually dividing a slave or groups of slaves into terms that denote value in the market. As she states throughout the piece, commodification can only be viewed from the end result of a commodified being, which makes understanding the mindset of slave owners and traders that much more complex. This idea ties into our reading and discussion of Soul by Soul, which breaks down the reasoning of a slave’s value into concrete characteristics observed by a potential buyer or trader. In rationalizing the reality of this system, Smallwood’s definition of the terms of commodification provides insight into how the slave system developed and grew as a market rather than a morally charged practice.

Another theme that Smallwood brings to light within this reading is resistance to commodification. Because it is so subjective and difficult to see, resisting physically and ideologically was vitally important to the humanization of enslaved Africans. This idea plays into several of the discussions we have had in class about the significance of Phillis Wheatley’s work and the importance of slave narratives in individualizing and humanizing the millions of people that were categorized by their race and value to the economy. This idea is also important in understanding the dominance that whites had over society at the time, as most resistance was crushed or ignored for the benefit of those in power. It is important to draw the comparison from this very blatant system of white oppression to the white privilege that pervades American society today, as much of the inequality without a doubt stems from the racial prejudice and oppression of the slave system that existed at the country’s establishment.

The chapters we read from Saltwater Slavery delve into the physical manifestation of commodifying human beings as well as the effects that this commodification had on the lives of individual enslaved Africans. It discusses the profound displacement that Africans felt when forced out of their homes and onto a ship headed for a new continent. She also discusses the categorization of enslaved Africans as “cargo” within ships built for the purposes of carrying human slaves, which exemplifies the commodification practiced by slave traders in reducing enslaved Africans to transportable goods. One of the most poignant lines from this piece is on page 125, in which Smallwood explains that “commodification built toward a crescendo that threatened to never arrive, but to leave the African captives suspended in an agony whose language no one knew.”

Several of Smallwood’s ideas have provided the basis for our understanding of the experience of black people in America. She writes eloquently on the lived experiences of enslaved Africans, which calls our attention as students to the specific lives of each slave rather than to “slaves” as a whole. Her work also explores the importance of commodification in the slave system, which perpetuated the objectification and dehumanization of enslaved Africans throughout the slave trade. These readings have been extremely helpful in understanding the details and nuances of the African-American experience throughout history.