Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt

In 1990, the second Modern Language Association Literacy Conference was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the conference Mary Louise Pratt a Stanford Professor delivered a keynote/lecture that revolutionized how people think about their social spaces. She introduced a revolutionary way to think about these social spaces, instead of calling them communities she started calling it the “contact zone”. According to Pratt a “contact zone is a place where cultures meet, clash, and grapple” (Pratt 487). While lecturing her fellow colleagues Pratt argues that our idea of community is strongly utopian. She continues to plead her case by saying that societies often profess, “embodying values like equality fraternity and liberty, but

After talking to students in classroom who were assigned to do a project on Pratt, getting a frequent response “I didn’t read it, it’s too hard to comprehend” was an ordinary thing. Therefore, writing a response to Pratt’s essay in a language that is comprehendible by regular people can be very helpful to those struggling students. In "Arts of the Contact Zone" Pratt discusses the mix of two different cultures in one area. Where one person is born and lives in a "contact zone" he/she is surrounded by two different conflicting cultures, and there are two different languages. She also introduces us with a new word "autoethnography", which means the way in which subordinate peoples present themselves in ways that their

In the article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” James Porter points out to the audience that there is no original piece or writing. Porter’s article addresses the concept of plagiarizing. He does not oppose that plagiarizing is wrong, rather he claims that it is inevitable. Porter argues that in all pieces of writing are intertexual. Intertexuality is the idea that all writings have traces and ideas from other past text. Intertextuality is important to completely understand a piece of writing.

     The Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt opened up a whole new concept for our class. The new term “contact zone” appeared and Pratt defined it as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today." The idea of the contact zone is intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that trigger much of the thinking about language, communication, and culture.

The writer sits, their fingers lay gently across the lettering of a keyboard. Images and words swirl through their mind, formulating the perfect literary storm. Yet their hands refuse to type. Even with the perfect story in mind, the writer must first choose the most effective mode of discourse to properly communicate their desired message. Every piece of literature, whether it be a poem or a novel, contains either one or various types of this communication. Rachel Lloyd, the author of Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, uses a total of four modes of this dissertation. These include description, narration, exposition and argument, and each contributes to the message of Lloyd’s memoir, some more effectively than

Throughout “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Pratt uses many real life situations to exemplify how contact zones create conflict and separate people and cultures; but she also examines ways to use the contact zone to our advantage in order to unify society. Sometimes people are led believe their differences are too great to overcome, so they remain isolated from the rest of society. People shouldn’t be trying to isolate themselves, but rather incorporating their culture into the community around them. This incorporation of cultures can often cause conflict, but Pratt explains that conflict can be avoided if people abandon their biases and pursue knowledge about the cultures around them. This idea “will read very differently” to people on opposing sides of the contact zone

While examining the packet of resources, two pieces caught my attention, “Vanishing Voices” by Russ Rymer and the Self Portrait Between the Borderline of Mexico and the United States by Frida Khalo. In “Vanishing Voices”, Russ Rhymer explains, “Parents in tribal villages often encourage their children to move away from their insular language … towards languages that will permit greater education” ( Rymer 7). This demonstrates how isolated ethnic groups abandon their culture in order to pick up the global language for economic prosperity. It indicates that remote societies are conforming to globalization for a greater economical gain. Likewise, the bottom of the self portrait of Frida Kahlo clearly displays how plants are converted to provide energy for modern technology. The plants represent the developing countries, while the technology serves as the most-developed countries which are eliminating remote cultures, and are using those countries’ resources for their own commercial advancement. These sources interested me as I had been accustomed to an Indian culture for 7 years, before assimilating into the American culture. I understood that I must learn the English language while preserving a part of my Indian heritage. I spent my 10 years in the U.S. learning English while slowly losing graph of my Indian language. It related to my life story as both sources centered around the theme of discarding one’s native culture to help learn the new language. Lori Hale, who is

Literary works have become one of the most preferred ways for people to express themselves and voice their concerns and opinions on societal issues. Through such pieces of work, authors are able to educate and critique the society at large, often forcing people to reconsider their views on certain matters. This has an overall effect of pushing them to reconsider the effect of their actions and errors as regards the issues in question. For others, writing about real life situations is most effective in communicating with their readers. Victims of racial discrimination may opt to put their ordeals down in black and white, mush the same way those who find themselves at the receiving end of sexual harassment may choose to write about their experiences. Arguably, the effect achieved is greater, in opposition to that of works of fiction. Even where a book is fictitious, more insight and connection to real life is achieved if the story is built around real life events and situations. Nancy Mairs does excellent in expressing herself through her spiritual autobiography; Waist-High in the World.

Literature is the window to realizing the negatives of society and how destructive certain norms can be. Readers are brought into a completely different story than their own, but by using similar issues in today’s world, the readers can actually learn from the story and its overall message. All writers write for a purpose, whether it’s for a new meaning to life, to live a different life than our own, or to impact others on an emotional level by teaching them to see the importance of the little things. As a reader, you search for pieces of literature that interest you whether you find the story like your own, or wish you lived the life in the story. By using issues in today’s within their works, authors are able to grab the reader's attention long enough for them to get across what they wanted to get across. Often in many works of literature, writers use societal issues as their basis for the work’s themes and symbols. By doing so, this allows the reader to question the morality behind social norms and how impactful certain ideals can be in people’s lives.

Throughout society’s development, individuals have grown to make connections based off of past experiences. Connections can have various meanings such as association with development, or a relationship between groups of people. In Azar Nafisi’s writing of, “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” she describes the creation of her reading group, and how it provides the type of education she desired to provide as an educator but was restricted based on the Iranian regime. Similarly, in Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel,” Faludi examines the unique culture of a nonaffiliated military school, which highlights the clash between

According to Mary Louise Pratt’s Arts of the Contact Zone, an autoethnographic text can be defined as a text where the author describes himself or his people using mechanisms provided by others. Such texts are almost always the product of a “contact zone” or a place where cultures meet and clash. In other words, autoethnographic texts are those in

The story, “Profits”, by Pratt displays a strong image of a teacher telling her students about the Montreal Massacre, where a man entered an engineering class at their university, divided up the men and women and separated them on different sides of the room, and proceeded to shoot and kill fourteen women, all because the shooter believed they were feminists and were stealing jobs from men. Throughout this story, Pratt can create vivid imagery of what occurred. Lesbian and female authors in general tend to “swim upstream” when attempting to make their voices heard. “For lesbian authors to find models for a sympathetic and Southern eruptive voice, the must dig deeper…perhaps this is why the language of Southern lesbians and feminist authors so often explores the imagery of walls and borders.” (Peckham)

Throughout her speech, Toni Morrison works towards defining and supporting this thesis of responsibility.  It is our responsibility, as users of words, to make language thrive.  Elizabeth Fox-Genovese has a similar goal, but takes a different approach in her essay “The Claims of a Common Culture: Gender, Race, Class and the Canon.”  She speaks on the use and composition of the canon taught in humanities classes.  Her idea is that the canon of today is much too one-sided and does not include the influence of the several different cultures, peoples, and ideas that make up our society.  She says that “with respect to representativeness, the canon fails woefully.  It represent[s] a small, sometimes minute, portion of the elite, which itself constitute[s] a statistical minority of the population” (Fox-Genovese 19).  In this abstract way, Fox-Genovese is reiterating Morrison’s words that what we say, and how we say it (or teach it), or what we fail to say (as in the canon taught today) is monumentally influencing and impactful upon others.

In Kuklick 74). The image of the west was the road to new discovery and the ability to begin anew in America. Along with Leo Marx, Smith spoke of the common themes in America as “collective images” (Kuklick 73). The images and symbols generated an explanation of the reason people in America behave the way they do. For example, Mark Twain’s writings reflected the culture in the era that he wrote them. As Smith remarked on Twain’s writing, “to what extent they were actually (as he often maintained) imposed by culture” (Smith 2). To understand Twain’s works, one must also understand the cultural themes that were existent during the time in which he created them. Writers can be impeded by the society in which they live. Additionally in Marx, The Machine and the Garden, Marx was reflecting on the themes and ideas that came about due to industrialization and how Americans felt about the changing of the landscape affected their lives. The premises of myth and symbol is to ascertain how written “value-laden”(Lipsitz 317) are understood within the culture. As recurrent themes and symbols invade literature and history, thus an understanding of the culture outside of the writing can be understood.

Culture Appropriation is a relative topic throughout the world and has brought upon many debates for years. One specific ongoing debate is if writers have the right to write about other cultures without being classified as culturally appropriated their culture. In “Who gets to Write What?” by Kaityln Greenidge and “Dangerous Ideas” by Kenzie Allen, both authors discuss how writers should have the ability to freely write about what they want but with resposnbility and without using stereotypes. Greenidge writes about how she witnessed someone’s work being accused of culture appropriation and her own struggles while Allen gives many examples of how pop culture is being appropriated. Greenidge does this through a personal narrative while Allen does this through the use of exemplification. Even though both authors represent their argument on culture appropriation, Kaitlyn Greenidge is more likely than Kenzie Allen to succeed in getting people to change their minds because her argument is clearer due to her organization, she uses reliable sources which adds credibility, and uses personal narrative in order to make it more believable and appeal to the readers emotions.