October 18, 2016 - 20:21
In our small group today (me, Olivia, Nkechi) we didn’t really get to acting out any instances of intersectionality in Getting Mother’s Body *sorry Anne!*. What took up the majority of our time was a discussion on how we personally define intersectionality and what it means to us in our lives, how we think about it and how we don’t, as well as the word as a practice vs. ideology vs. noun vs. politic. During discussion, Liv mentioned that the places her identities intersect are contact zones in themselves, and she noted that these moments/spaces of interaction/expression can be violent, unsafe, and unpredictable. Little did Liv know that I LOVE talking about contact zones, so I was very glad that she brought this up. For context, contact zones, as defined by Mary Louise Pratt, 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.” I took up her comment and added that one of the components of a contact zone that I feel is very important is how there is beauty and growth in contact zones in spite of/as a result of the pain and discomfort these spaces may foster. The complex, colliding, complementing identities that we each hold give us meaning in the same ways that they can leave us vulnerable to oppression and the abuse of power. (For the record, I definitely didn’t say all that I just wrote in class).
After our discussion ended, I recalled an essay that I wrote an essay where I worked through the possibility of creating community in and through the contact zone that is the classroom. I argued that bringing our personhood into the classroom is inevitable, and that perhaps we can begin to address the power dynamics in classes by opening up with a conversation about the contact zone that we all share. A conversation like this may create the necessary space and tone for acknowledging intersectionality in ourselves, in other, and in the structures that we inhabit together. Wondering now how we’ve begun to do this in our 360, where we’ve fallen short in doing so, and whether or not these conversations have been effective in addressing the complex effects of the contact zone.