Slippage in the contact zones

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. While referring to the social institution and society as a whole, “slippage” means “slide into a state” that’s comfortable of majority, taking things for granted, unaware of the mistakes and injustice, and in other words, “being blind”.

 

Contact zone might be a solution to the problems associated with slippages. In the article Arts of the Contact zone by Pratt, we can see the echoes of slippage in various aspects. Slippages, in its meaning of uncaring the surrounding mistakes, do happen around us, in streets hanging confederate flags, in regions where people with color or those who are defined “queer” still suffering from discrimination, in swastikas at Swarthmore, even in the most open places like Brynmawr, things happen without enough notices. Like how Anne suggests in her essay, “ Amid the rigorous academics at Brynmawr, slipping is just as inevitable, but often unnoticed; It’s potential has certainly been little unexplored.” In the modern society, slippage not only refer to people taking corruption for granted, but also happen when people are under awareness but do nothing because they doubt the possibility of change. The problem brought by Pratt that modern nation “is imagined as limited”, “sovereign” and “fraternal”, which “assumed all participants are engaged in the same game and that the game is the same for all players.” but “ often in not”,echoes with Anne’s case that “sense of the futility of individuals confronting the structure of white supremacy”. Hence the need of generate contact zones might be introduced.

 

However, within the contact zone, which “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”, slippage also exists and even helps to function the contact zone, but in a different way. Viewing from a different perspective, slippage refers to “‘ecological’ thinking and acting: diverse, unruly and fertile; conditional, uncertain and incomplete—an unending process, very much dependent on the unexpected.” In the contact zone which “no one is excluded" and “no one is safe”, those characteristics of slippages could help the members to relax their minds that were once stifled by the close-minded society and more brave to embrace their own cultural identities. In other ways, according to Emily, slippage also could be a way to “access our unconscious”, or “what we really mean”, members in contact zone will be more likely to speak out their true feelings. Furthermore, things that dropped out from slippage could be issues that people are blind of out of the contact zone, when dealing with those issues, as Anne suggests, one can not only clean them up, but can also ponder and meditate on it, which might engender new discoveries and serendips.

 

Slippage, based on it’s different definitions, engenders the needs of contact zone and also function the contact zone. People can make better communication and build a better world with their awareness of slippage and their involvement in the contact zone.