Arts Of The Contact Zone
Response to Question 1
According to Mary Pratt, “contact zone” is a term “to refer to 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” (Pratt 487). In Pratt's speech “Arts of the Contact Zone,” she uses terms, such as autoethnography and transculturation, to help demonstrate the reasoning of her ideas. The main force of this essay is to explain how the various sections, such as Pratt’s son’s baseball cards and Guaman Poma, support Pratt’s argument.
Pratt starts her speech by sharing her son's experience which about collecting baseball cards. She points out that her son learned more than just baseball through those cards, those baseball cards gave her son the chance to learn plenty of lessons. For instance, he can learn about the history of America racism and also the struggle against it because he was curious about the difference between each baseball card. And also, collecting and trading those baseball cards gave him a sense of fairness, exchange, and trust. Baseball cards opened his eyes and showed him the door to the world.
A contact zone has both positive and negative influences. The positive side, for example, students have different culture backgrounds study in a same classroom. Under such situation, people are able to discuss their idea with different views and share their culture to others. However, a contact zone has a negative side, colonialism is one of the many examples. Following the story about her son, Pratt introduces Guaman Poma. Poma wrote a twelve hundred pages letter to King Philip III of Spain in1613. This letter written in two languages and it can be divided into two different parts. The first part, “Nueva Coronica,” “was the main writing apparatus through which the Spanish presented their American conquests to themselves” (Pratt 487). According to
According to Mary Pratt, “contact zone” is a term “to refer to 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” (Pratt 487). In Pratt's speech “Arts of the Contact Zone,” she uses terms, such as autoethnography and transculturation, to help demonstrate the reasoning of her ideas. The main force of this essay is to explain how the various sections, such as Pratt’s son’s baseball cards and Guaman Poma, support Pratt’s argument.
Pratt starts her speech by sharing her son's experience which about collecting baseball cards. She points out that her son learned more than just baseball through those cards, those baseball cards gave her son the chance to learn plenty of lessons. For instance, he can learn about the history of America racism and also the struggle against it because he was curious about the difference between each baseball card. And also, collecting and trading those baseball cards gave him a sense of fairness, exchange, and trust. Baseball cards opened his eyes and showed him the door to the world.
A contact zone has both positive and negative influences. The positive side, for example, students have different culture backgrounds study in a same classroom. Under such situation, people are able to discuss their idea with different views and share their culture to others. However, a contact zone has a negative side, colonialism is one of the many examples. Following the story about her son, Pratt introduces Guaman Poma. Poma wrote a twelve hundred pages letter to King Philip III of Spain in1613. This letter written in two languages and it can be divided into two different parts. The first part, “Nueva Coronica,” “was the main writing apparatus through which the Spanish presented their American conquests to themselves” (Pratt 487). According to