September 9, 2016 - 16:45
Every single day one enters a contact zone. Whether it is because one lives in a diverse community in terms of race, or in a homogeneous community in terms of race but with different economic classes. The United States of America is a contact zone. I am a product of a contact zone. My children and my children's children will all be products of a contact zone because of my family's choice to mix blood. While I see this as a positive outcome of a contact zone, others may not. Contact zones are “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” (Pratt). Contact zones lead to the intersectionality of those affected by the contact. Intersectionality often leads to oppression. I've decided that Pratt would relate to my essay about my identity and how an argument with a man about women's rights taught me about my place in the world, and label it as a contact zone.
Pratt would have thought that this argument between the male student and I had brought us together because we had physical differences and different understandings of women's rights. Our argument was mainly about the rights that women had to their bodies, based on the Greek play Lysistrata that we were reading in class. The male student that I was arguing with had said that "the women did not have the right to withhold sex from their husbands because they were married and the men had the right to their wives' bodies" (Buitrago). This was the contact of two people of different genders and backgrounds clashing with one another. The contact that was made between us did result in a negative argument, but at the same time it helped me understand why he disagreed with the fact that women were withholding sex from their husbands. At the end of the argument neither of us had to alter our opinions, we just had to respect what the other had said whether we agree with it or not.
The class itself was a contact zone because of the different ideas, different genders, etc. that were present. The differences are what brought us together because the classroom wasn't a safe space. This was a space where people get uncomfortable, get offended, and get confused. This space was an English Seminar; a discussion based class, so what do you expect? This is the type of class that the teachers in Pratt's writing were trying to create. They didn't want to teach the students material that was in "their own image" they wanted everything to be different and to resonate with some students and cause differences in other students to arise. This contact zone within a classroom allows students to further understand the different views that people have on the world. When a person isn't taught one way and are shown a variety of ways to do or learn things, that person is more likely to be open and to figure out what he/she believes, versus what someone else wants that person to believe.
Pratt helped me to understand that encounters like the one I had with the male student, are encounters that help me grow as a person. There are different kinds of people that make up the world and it is important to know how to interact with them respectably. Without meeting people that are different from you in any kind of way, deprives you from a piece of knowledge that helps your mind grow. I am not the only kind of person there is, my views aren't the only kind of views there are therefore, I need to be exposed to those that aren't like me. Not only does it help me grow as a person but more interactions like that will better prepare me for other interactions similar to one in which someone disagrees with my belief. Pratt would believe that my teacher did a great job at having the classroom not be a safe space for our contact zone, letting us argue, and putting her own beliefs to the side while we had our seminars on controversial topics like women's rights.