Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt
In the Arts of the Contact Zone, Mary Louise Pratt has tried to explain the concepts of the “contact zone”, which she referred to as “the space of colonial encounters”. This social space that she speaks about is a stage where “disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination”. Pratt aims to highlight these relations between the colonizer and the colonized “in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices”. There often are conflicts of views and ideas; the very concept of existence maybe apprehended differently by the two involved subjects in the “contact zone”.The inability of the colonizer to comprehend the cultural sentiments or the intentional ignorance for selfish interests, towards the colonized subjects has often given rise to great revolutions and bitter revolts. To illustrate this idea, one might examine the “colonial encounter” between the British and the Indians.
“The contact of two races so dissimlar in character, in culture, and institutions, as the English and the Indian, raises the problem of the contact of cultures in its most acute forms” (Spear, 22). The problem in India was complicated by numerous factors. The strangeness of the environment, the differences in the national character of the two groups and the differences in the social and political institutions, were the few that played an im...
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 systematically fail to realize”. (Pratt 493). Pratt wanted her colleagues to realize that it comes down to seeing your social spaces as “communities” or as “contact zones”. Although, she makes a strong case stating that communities are considered utopian and therefore social spaces should not be seen as such. I believe social spaces should be seen as “contact zones” and that we should embrace that clash of cultures it creates because it has the potential to make us stronger. After all, the laws of celestial mechanics dictate that when two objects (cultures) collide there is always damage of a collateral nature. While reflecting on how the concepts of “community” and “contact zone” affect me and how I perceive my social spaces, I could not think of a better example than the “Northeastern University Community”. It made me think of how one gets to be part of a social space, how being outside or inside of such space can influence the point of view one has on it, and even how could it be possible that we suc...
In many situations, introducing a new party into a land that was formerly inhabited and assimilated by another party with completely different societal, political and cultural values results in a lengthy period of transition and conflict due to misunderstanding. Colonization and the interactions between colonists and Indians during the early stages of settlement in the New World was certainly no exception. Although European societies and political structures were hierarchical and left less to the impoverished members of society, Indian societies and political structures were not as patriarchal and featured communal cooperation. Culturally speaking, Europeans were more fragmented and hierarchical but less ritualistic in religious practices than were Indians. With these innumerable differences and struggles to communicate with not only the European settlers but also with each other, it is no surprise that the Indians fell at the hands of the English in King Philip’s War.
The first perception discussed in the essay compares the way the Indians run their form of government to that of the English. He notes how the Indian are able to run a government without police, prisons, or punishment, and instead it is run on a sort of basis of respect with “great order and decency” (Norton, 477). When someone speaks in the Indian counsel everyone listens and remains silent, and once the speaker is finished the rest remain silent to allow time for th...
Mary Louise Pratt wrote the essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” with the purpose of explaining that society would benefit if people were exposed to and understood the concept of “contact zones”. She refers to contact zones as social spaces where cultures meet and clash with each other, usually with one culture being dominant over the other. A person living in a contact zone is exposed to two different cultures, two different languages, and as a result is presented with a struggle in each culture to maintain themselves. From being surrounded by several different cultures, people begin to integrate the concept of transculturation—a process in which subordinate cultures evolve by taking things from dominant, more advanced cultures, and make it their own. She also calls to attention the error of assuming that people in a community all speak the same language and all share the same motives and beliefs. Pratt insists that education and society must be reformed in such ways that introduce people to the principles of contact zones in order to gain mutual understanding of each other and acquire new wisdom. In order for this mutual understanding to be achieved, the subordinate cultures that exist need to be able to make their voices heard; this leads to the improvement of society as a whole.
As Indians living in white culture, many problems and conflicts arise. Most Indians tend to suffer microaggressions, racism and most of all, danger to their culture. Their culture gets torn from them, and slowly, as if it was dream, many Indians become absorbed into white society, all the while trying to retain their Indian lifestyle. In Indian Father’s Plea by Robert Lake and Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, the idea that a dominant culture can pose many threats to a minority culture is shown by Wind-Wolf and Alexie.
The historical attempts of Europeans to claim lands that are not their own and forcibly take them from previous owners have created a repeated scenario of fierce conflict between the colonizers and the colonized. This scenario is seen so often in history that it has become a sort of universal theme, a fact not missed by writers and filmmakers. In both The Power of One and Pocahontas, the colonization of an existing culture creates tension between the colonizers and the colonized. This tension creates prejudice, and the prejudice often manifests itself in violence, whether it is the violence of a culture acting on their prejudices or the violence of a culture responding to the prejudice of another. The former, as well as the prejudice itself, is a part of the post-colonial theme of Othering; the latter is a part of the theme of Anti-Colonial Resistance. To explore these themes further, I will use my previous examples, The Power of One and Pocahontas, to show that the tension caused by colonization often affects cultures in a similar manner.
Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of “contact zones” was applied to the written accounts of the First Encounters in America in many ways. Mary Louise Pratt stated that the relationships between the natives and explorers “Usually involved… conditions of coercion.”(141). An example of this concept can would be in “Coming of the Spanish and the Pueblo Revolt.” This example is when the Spaniards lied to the natives. The Spaniards told the natives that Spaniards were more powerful than the witches. It states that the natives were so scared that they allowed “themselves to be made slaves.” (261). “In Imperial Eyes" Pratt also discussed an “asymmetrical relations of power.” (141). Two examples of this concept is also in the “Coming of the Spanish and the
...al features of “Orientalism” such as the spirituality and mysticism of India have been embraced by natives of the “Orient” as positive and aided the construction of an indigenous national identity. The singular, unitary modern world religion known as “Hinduism”, while originally constructed in the most part by Western scholars, is arguably not merely an “Orientalist concept”. This view, advocated by von Stietencron is flawed in that it fails to recognise the development of the “religion” and its associated culture since the nineteenth century. While it is doubtful that an “essence” of “Hinduism” exists, to reduce the religion to a being a “Western construct” in the twenty-first century is to deny the Indian people who label themselves as being “Hindu’s” the opportunity to value and develop their own national culture, albeit still influenced by their colonial past.
that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American
During the early 1900s, the British people had been living among the Indian culture for an extended period of time. Several discrepancies had been established between these two groups due to stereotypes, prejudices, and ignorance. E.M. Forster implied his deepest aspirations for accord to ameliorate this quandary in his erudite novel, A Passage to India, written in 1912. Through specific usage of certain landscape features, a sound, and animals, the omniscient narrator explores the idea of an all-encompassing unity and its beneficial and corrosive possibilities.
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
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.
Jess, an Indian girl whose parents came to Britain in search for a better life, struggles to find mutual ground for cultural norms of her parents, and the cultural norms of the society she lives in. Her parents have adapted some cultural elements such as mobile phones, but those are all merely just a means to adapt to a modern culture they don't feel they belong to, or rather don't want to belong to. Because, when it comes down to moral values, they are not concerend with gadgets or such they have adapted from British culture, they rather feel the importance of belonging to their Indian community in Britain, rather than the British community. They are concerened only with what their Indian communi...
...a possibility of three pivotal structures of engagement composed to the native Africans, the immigrant Indians and the colonizing whites. This cast is further complicated by “withinist” borders such as Goan versus Shamsi Indians. The two Indian groups differ in terms of religious affiliation and geographical location. The narrator, Fernandes, is of Goan extract himself and this problematizes his withinist engagement with other Indians before he engages their collective past. The presence of immigrant Indians in the narrative is important in at least two ways: they are a colonized group as well as an important factor in East Africa’s colonizing process and racial structural engagement.
Pandey, T. N., 2014. Lecture 1/9/14: Culture of India: Aryan and Indigenous Population. Cultures of India. U.C. Santa Cruz.