October 3, 2016 - 16:48
“Slippage in Anne Dalke essay has multiple meanings. When referring to the verbal ‘slippage’, it means the “involuntary” loosing control of words, speaking of something unconsciously.” In my essay named Slippage in contact zone, I revealed the relationship between Slippage and contact zone, which I suggested that slippage engenders the needs of contact zone while also function the contact zone. But In Ravens at Play, authors wrote about their thoughts of play, identity and the whole world as a contact zone. Profound questions are pondered: can people play? What restrained us from playing and what cause the play to be problematic? It casts doubts on my arguments and provides new alternatives.
Slippage generates contact zone, as I believed, but when comes to the question of play, answers are uncertain. Slippage generates play, when we interested in other’s actions or happens to “play together”, normal play activities would be produced. But it’s our identity, or our awareness of our identity, that turns play in to a contact zone. According to Pratt, contact zones are “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”. When aware of our identities, play becomes a social space that members experience the clash of level of power, gender, species and our identity.“We were forced to encounter ourselves as members of a species”, as Debbie suggests. When aware of identities, as Thom said, play is“about daring to be playful with others that one does one really know, and who may want to eat you.” But the interesting thing is that the awareness of identity could also hinder the beginning of play. The awareness of our different identities, human and coyote, and raven, make us think of the consequences of our relationships and every uncertainties, make us “withhold ourselves, our food, our play”, restrain ourselves from being involved in a contact zone. “What we might become in the contact zone was thus constrained and our becoming moved toward withdrawal: diverse possibilities were both opened up and foreclosed by any kind of play we might choose or be able to engage in with others”,as Debbie suggested.
I suggested that slippage function contact zone in my previous essay, all in positive ways, which it could help people to “speak out their true feelings” and “relax their minds that were once stifled by the close-minded society and more brave to embrace their own cultural identities.” However, in Ravens at Play, slippage of identities makes play, a contact zone, dangerous or even destructive.When “in the entangled agendas and motivations that come together when species meet, interactions cannot be organized out into dualised categories that put playing and hunting, or trust and suspicion, at odds with each other.” Identity, or our awareness of our identities, make the play destructive. Due to our identities, play is not purely joy or fun, but may become some activities that one side take advantages of while another side suffers,“not exactly performing trust”, and blurred lines between playing and hunting. When cats play with rats, corvid play with coyote, “life and death, play and predation, are all possibilities in an emergent field of uncertainties where events and relationships erupt and are actualized. ”
Ravens at play casts doubt on my argument that slippage generates contact zone and functions contact zone by providing ideas that our identities turns play into real contact zone and slippage can be dangerous. Then is slippage a problem or a good thing? should we slip/play or not? How should we treat our identities in a contact zone? Those are big questions that need to be answered.
Work Cited:
Deborah Bird Rose, Stuart Cooke and Thom Van Dooren. "Ravens at Play." Cultural Studies Review 17, 2 (September 2011), 326-43.
Chapter 8, "Slipping," in Jody Cohen and Anne Dalke, Steal This Classroom: Teaching and Learning Unbound.
Zilu Zhang, Slippage in Contact Zone, September 16th, 2016