Mary Louise Pratt: “Arts of the Contact Zone”
Pratt continued the assertion of the baseball card experience, as an excellent way of learning, by using examples of real world texts that were common to the baseball cards, and what she quotes as “new visions of literacy” (486). This was a quote from comments made by Tony Sarmiento at this particular conference (the Pittsburgh conference on literature). In many ways, her article is based in the original thought of how Sam learnt to communicate, and become literate. She mentions the letter, written by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, with text as well as images. This is a particular reflection on the baseball cards, and how Sam used it to obtain literacy. In light of her ethnographic experience Pratt, therefore, agrees with the way in which literacy is obtained. The correlation between the baseball cards and the writings of Guaman Poma, assisted with the issue of communication, but more so with literacy, and in particular the contact zones as she mentioned before in her talk.
What is most incredible about the unpacking of the literacy aspect? Is it perhaps that the writing of Guaman Poma, used the combination of “text by appropriating and adapting pieces of the representational repertoire of the invaders” (491)? She emphasizes the fact that, as with Sam’s learning, Guaman Poma’s writing did not “simply imitate or reproduce it; he selects and adapts it along Andean lines to express (bilingually; mind you) Andean interests and aspirations” (491). It is the visual and written components that makes this “Transcultural character” possible in both instances. Thus, “Transculturation, like autoethnography, is a phenomenon of the contact zone” (491).
What is interesting in the letter Pratt mentions, is the fact that many researchers see it as chaotic, however she (Pratt) disagrees with this fact in that the letter simply comes across as heterogenic in the way it was constructed as well as in the way it has to be read at the other end – intercultural as well as bilingual. Pratt refers to all the interactions – “autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression” – as some of the “literate arts of the contact zone” (492). However, should one unpack these individual aspects in order to see exactly how the “literate arts of the contact zone” contributes to literacy as Pratt explains it?
As a conclusion, the idea that Pratt has initiated is perhaps the fact that literacy should be open to the “literate arts” as mentioned above as well as allowing for transculturation such as autoethnography to create the contact zone necessary for gaining literacy.
Discussion Questions:
What is most incredible about the unpacking of the literacy aspect?
Should one unpack these individual aspects in order to see exactly how the “literate arts of the contact zone” contributes to literacy as Pratt explains it?
Works Cited
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession (1991): 33-40. Web.
