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Analysis Of Mary Louise Pratt's Art Of The Contact Zone

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Mary Louise Pratt’s essay “ Arts of the Contact Zone” opens up a new concept for social spaces where cultures meet in a context of extensive differences of power in social and intellectual classes. Pratt has a lot of thoughts regarding contact zones and communities that she supports by describing different scenarios.
The contact zone is a place of many emotions. It can be a dangerous place where people misunderstand each other, but it can also be a place where people learn from each other and have a mutual understanding. The contact zone is primarily a place where cultures contact and interacts with each other, because of these interactions, the people are allowed to learn from each other, and get diverse perspectives of other cultures; a multicultural community. When this happens, transculturation occurs, which means that the natural tendency of people reflects to resolve conflicts over time, rather than exacerbating them. When Pratt is talking about the contact zone, she also brings up the term “community,” because the contact zone is intended on being a part as a community that uses the same language, communication, and culture.
Pratt also introduces the term autoethnography, which she describes as “ a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them ” (pg. 319)
According to Pratt is an autoethnography a text where an oppressed …show more content…

Pratt says, “often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power such as colonialism or slavery.” (pg. 319) It is about the oppressed and the oppressor and their asymmetrical power of the oppressor and the oppressed like the slavery that Pratt describes. . I believe this is the main idea to transmit the contact zone's point of the one who has the power versus the one that does not have the

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