Arts of the Contact Zone

by Carol L. Robinson
Kent State University

Understanding Contact Zones

Arts of the Contact Zone (Mary Louise Pratt) This piece has political elements, but it is mainly about the relationships between language, communication, and culture.

APA Citation: Pratt, M. (1991). Arts of the contact zone . Profession, 91, 33-40. “Arts of the Contact Zone” by Mary Louise Pratt is about how clashes between groups, or communities, of people are shaped by language and cultural identities. Pratt first introduced her ideas in a keynote address to the annual conference of the Modern Language Association in 1991. She explained that she uses the term “contact zones” “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 lived out in many parts of the world today”.  Although the term was introduced within the context of linguistic and literary studies, it has since been appropriated into other studies, including: feminist theory, critical race theory, postcolonial theory and in discussions of teaching and pedagogy.

A Sad Story: Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (Guamán Poma) wrote a 1200 page letter (800 pages of written text and 400 pages of captioned drawings), an autoethnographic text that serves as a contact zone of transculturation between his people and the Spaniards. The letter is a blending of two cultures in terms of languages (Quechua and Spanish), beliefs, literacy vs. oralacy, capitalism, colonialism, and other clashes. Poma wrote this letter in 1613 and sent it from his home in what is now known as Peru to King Philip in Spain, who never got it.

Some Concepts to Consider:

  • CONTACT ZONE(S):  An area or means of communication that exists between two communities, a point of contact.
  • TRANSCULTURATION:  A process in which a subordinated group assimilates (takes in; transforms) cultural materials from the dominate group.
  • COMMUNITY:  A group of people who have been brought together for some reason. A community can be real or imagined (imagined: such as how we might dream a new neighborhood might be). A community can be held with a real or imagined space (imagined space: such as a virtual community in a video game).
  • AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC:  A recorded item, made by a people about that people. Often, the item connects that people to another, dominate, people. For example, Poma’s book-long letter is a recorded item (of both drawings and written text) about his people, particularly in terms of how his people (the Andeans/Incas) see the Spaniards (the dominating people) seeing them: the Andeans see the Spaniards as seeing the Andeans as sub-human.

Some quotes to consider:

  • “…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” (1).
  • “…a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them” (2).
  • “…are representations that the so-defined others construct in response to or in dialogue with those texts” (2).
  • “While subordinate peoples do not usually control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what gets absorbed into their own and what it gets used for. Transculturation, like autoethnography, is a phenomenon of the contact zone” (2).
  • “The idea of the contact zone is intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that underlie much of the thinking about language, communication, and culture that gets done in the academy” (4).

Consider also:

  • This was originally a speech, presented in 1991, to the Modern Language Association (the “elite” of the literate).
  • This speech is about language, literacy, and oralacy. This speech is about the domination of one culture over another.
  • It is about the elitism, exploitation, and marginalization. It is about class (upper, middle, lower), race, gender, ethnicity, nationality,….
  • It is about knowledge: knowledge is power–if you know something, you have power.
  • For example, if you know how to speak a particular language, then you have power over those who do not.
  • (There are exceptions: for example, the Spaniards had better knowledge of weapons technology than the Andeans, a knowledge more powerful than their knowledge of their native language.)
  • If you speak, read, and write in a language well, however, then you have power over those who do not (speak, read and write well): you can manipulate them. So, what do YOU think? “Many of those who govern us display, openly, their interest in a quiescent, ignorant, manipulable electorate. Even as an ideal, the concept of an enlightened citizenry seems to have disappeared from the national imagination” (5).

Readily Available Materials

You should be able to access each of these by simply clicking on the link. If you have trouble accessing any of the below links, search for it after logging into KSU Libraries (see instructions, below). If you continue to have trouble accessing any of the below links, please email me (clrobins@kent.edu) right away!

  • Books
    • Denzin, Norman K. Performance Autoethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. 2nd ed. New York and London, Routledge, 2018.
    • Diversi, Marcelo. and Claudio Moreira. Betweener Autoethnographies: A Path Towards Social Justice. New York and London, Routledge, 2018.
  • Articles on Autoethnography and Identity
    • Crean, Margaret. “Affective Formations of Class Consciousness: Care Consciousness.” The Sociological Review, vol. 66, no. 6, 2018, pp. 1177-93.
    • Cunningham, Natalie, and Teresa Carmichael. “Finding My Intuitive Researcher’s Voice through Reflexivity: An Autoethnographic Study.” The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, vol. 16, no. 2, 2018, pp. 56-66.
    • Fletcher, Megan Alyssa. “We to Me: An Autoethnographic Discovery of Self, in and out of Domestic Abuse.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, pp. 42-59.
    • Golding, Barry, and Annette Foley. “Constructing Narratives in Later Life: Autoethnography beyond the Academy.” Australian Journal of Adult Learning, vol. 57, no. 3, Nov. 2017, pp. 384-400.
    • Goodson, Lori. “Revealing Our Superpowers: An Autoethnography on Childhood Abuse and How It Shapes Educators.” Educational Considerations, vol. 44, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-8.
    • Neil, Joanna. “Creating Spaces for Reflection with Digital Autoethnography: Students as Researchers into Their Own Practices.” iJADE, vol. 38, no. 4, 2019, pp. 823-831.
    • Presley, Rachel E., and Alane L. Presswood. “Pink, Brown, and Read All Over: Representation at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.”  Cultural Studies←→Critical Methodologies, vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, pp. 61-71.
    • Stern, Danielle M. “‘He Won’t Hurt Us Anymore’: A Feminist Performance of Healing for Children Who Witness Domestic Violence.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 37, 2014, pp. 360-78.
  • Articles on Autoethnography and Protest
    • Au, Anson. “Reconceptualizing Social Movements and Power: Towards a Social Ecological Approach.” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, 2017, pp. 519-545.
    • Carr, Darius. “Black Lives Matter: An Autoethnographic Account of the Ferguson, Missouri, Civil Unrest of 2014.” Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict, 2016, pp. 6-20.
    • Carter, Angie, and Ahna Kruzic. “Centering the Commons, Creating Space for the Collective: Ecofeminist #NoDAPL Praxis in Iowa.” Journal of Social Justice, vol. 7, 2017, pp. 1-22.
    • Gale, Ken, and Jonathan Wyatt. “Autoethnography and Activism: Movement, Intensity, and Potential.” Qualitative Inquiry, Special Issue: Auto-Ethnography and Activism, vol. 25, no. 6, 2018, pp. 566-8.
    • Harris, Anne, and Stacy Holman Jones. “Activist Affect.” Qualitative Inquiry, Special Issue: Auto-Ethnography and Activism, vol. 25, no. 6, 2018, pp. 563-5.
    • Rosario, Melissa. “Intimate Publics: Autoethnographic Meditations on the Micropolitics of Resistance.” Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 39, no. 1, 2014, pp. 36-54.
    • Presley, Rachel E., and Alane L. Presswood. “Pink, Brown, and Read All Over: Representation at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.”  Cultural Studies←→Critical Methodologies, vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, pp. 61-71.

Find It in Your University Library

  • Transforming power through cultural humility in the intercultural contact zone of art therapy. By: Kapitan, Lynn. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, Vol. 40, Issue 2, 2023, pp. 61-67.
  • Issues of mutuality and sharing in the transnational spaces of heritage—contesting diaspora and homeland experiences in Palestine. By: Hammami, Feras. International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 22, Issue 6, June 2016, pp. 446-465.
  • On cleaning: Student activism in the corporate and imperial university. By: Carey, Kristi. Open Library of Humanities, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2016, pp. 1-30.
  • Cultural studies, composition, and pedagogy. By: Mullen, Mark. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Vol. 7, No. 3, Sep 2005, pp. 19-27.
  • “Government of da peeps, for da peeps, and by da peeps”: Revisiting the contact zone. By: Maxson, Jeffrey. Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 24, Issue 1, Spring 2005, pp. 24-47.
  • Community or contact zone?: Deconstructing an honors classroom. By: Dallas, Phyllis Surrency and Mary Marwitz. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, Vol. 3, Issue 3, Fall 2003, pp. 435-439.
  • Everyday curators: Collecting as literate activity. By: Rohan, Liz. Composition Studies, Vol. 38, Issue 1, Spring 2010, pp. 53-68.
  • Teaching authorship, gender and identity through Grrrl Zines production. By: Gabai, Sara. Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol. 18, Issue 1, Nov 2016, pp. 20-32.
  • A place pedagogy for “global contemporaneity”. By: Somerville, Margaret J. Educational Philosophy & Theory, Vol. 42, Issue 3, April 2010, pp. 326-344.