Arts of the Contact Zone Author(s): Mary Louise Pratt Source: Profession, (1991), pp.

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learned

Arts of the Contact

Mary Louise Pratt
Whenever

Zone
?

means for what it modified labor, one's body and talents to be owned and dispensed by another.
He knows something Cuba, and how men about and Cen and Japan, Taiwan, tral America

the meaning

of

corn

_
up, what often

boys do things there.Through

the history and experience of

pops first intomy mind is a conversation I overheard son Sam and his best friend, eightyearsago betweenmy Willie, aged six and seven, respectively: "Why don't you
trade me Many strum-scrum." Carl Yes... Yes.. Trails "That's . oh, for Carl not how I don't Yats you . . .Yesits . . .Ya say it, dummy, Sam and Willie it's

the subject

of literacy comes

baseball stadiumshe thoughtabout architecture,light, wind, topography, meteorology, thedynamics of public of space.He learned the meaning of expertise, knowing
about

Even with

know."

had justdiscoveredbaseball cards. Many Trailswas their with thehelp of first-grade decoding, English phonics, of were quite rightly Trillo.The name they thename Manny
stumped on was Carl Yastremski. That was the first time

to I remembered seeing themput theirincipientliteracy

Iwas of course thrilled.

his of baseball, struggling way throughthestages the local Little League system,luckyenough to be a pretty good player, loving thegame and coming to know deeply his Literacybegan forSam with thenewlypronounceable names on the picture cards and brought him what has
been strengths and weaknesses.

an with an adult. adult?especially Through was Sam's out his baseball years, preadolescent history luminous point of contact with grown-ups, his lifeline to of course, all this time he was also caring. And, playing

sation with a stranger and feel sureof holding your own.

something

well

enough

that you can start a conver

their own use, and

Sam and Willie learneda lot about phonics thatyear to decipher surnameson baseball cards, and a by trying

lot about cities, states, weights, places of birth, heights, of life.In theyears,thatfollowed, Iwatched Sam stages skillsto applyhis arithmetic working out battingaverages
subtracting and retirement years from rookie years; I

and

watched him develop sensesof patterningand order by

arranging

aestheticjudgment comparingdifferent by photos,differ

ent series, layouts, and color schemes. American geogra

rearranging his cards for hours

on end, and

most integrated life. experienceof his thirteen-year Like Iwas delighted to see schoolinggive Sam many parents, the tools with which to find and open all thesedoors.At the same timeI found itunforgivable thatschooling itself as him nothing remotely meaningful todo, letalone gave would actually takehim beyond the refer anythingthat masculinist ethosof baseball and itslore. ential,
However, nor I was not on invited here I was as an expert literacy. as a parent, to speak asked to speak as an

most easily the broadest,

varied, most

enduring,

and

baseball phy and historytook shape inhismind through cards.Much of his social life revolved around trading
them, and he importance to means Baseball Nowhere money, ment, learned about of processes as exchange, fairness, trust, the to results, what it opposed taken advantage cheated, of, even robbed. get life too. cards were the medium of his economic better to learn the power of and values and arbitrariness use value of and invest

MLA member working in the elite academy. In that my contributionisundoubtedly supposed to be capacity
abstract, wouldn't irrelevant, and anchored dream of outside the real world. I disappointing to head back several centuries immediately has a few points in common with baseball cards and thoughts to the conference, Peruvianist about what Tony called new visions Richard Sarmiento, anyone. I propose to a text that raises

the absolute

divorce

between

value, notions exchange the possibility of values. Baseball cards meant

long-

short-term

in his comments

personal baseball

that are indepen there

dent of market

named

Pietschmann

card shows, where

theDanish Royal Archive in Copenhagen and came

of literacy. In 1908 a was in exploring

was much to be learnedabout adultworlds aswell. And baseball cardsopened thedoor to baseball books, shelves
shelves of encyclopedias, histories, biogra magazines, even cartoons, phies, novels, books of jokes, anecdotes, poems. Sam learned the and

the struggle baseball;he saw thedepres against itthrough

two world wars from behind home plate. He

history of American

racism

and

The author isProfessor ofSpanish and Comparative Literature and Director of theProgram in Modern Thought and Literature at Stan This paper was presented as the ford University. keynoteaddress at the for Literacy conferenceinPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Responsibilities September 1990.

sion and

34

Arts of theContact Zone a Itwas dated in the city of Cuzco in

across

Peru, in theyear 1613, some forty yearsafterthefinal fall of the Inca empire to the Spanish and signedwith an Andean indigenousname: Felipe Guaman unmistakably Poma de Ayala. Written in a mixture ofQuechua and
ungrammatical, expressive Spanish, the manuscript was a

manuscript.

a his halfbrother, mestizowhose Spanish father had given

him access to

to Guaman Pomas letter theking is written in two lan andQuechua) and twoparts. The firstis guages (Spanish Nueva coronica 'New Chronicle/ The title is called the which the Spanish representedtheir apparatus through
American the main conquests to themselves. In It constituted one of official discourses. writing a "new chronicle," to construct a new important. The chronicle of course was the main writing

religious

education.

addressed by an unknown but apparently literate letter Andean to King Philip III of Spain. What stunned
Pietschmann was that the letterwas twelve hundred

New Chronicleand Good Government. No titledThe First one knew (or knows) how themanuscript got to the in No library Copenhagen or how long ithad been there. one, itappeared, had everbothered to read itor figured
out how. Quechua guage was not thought culture of as a written lan in 1908, nor Andean as a literate culture.

There were almost eighthundred pages ofwritten long. textand fourhundred of captioned linedrawings. It was

pages

Guaman Poma tookover theofficial Spanish genreforhis

own ends. Those ends were,

world, a pictureof a Christianworld with picture of the

Andean it?Cuzco, rather at the center of than European peoples not Jerusalem. In theNew Chronicle Guaman

roughly,

Pietschmann prepared a paper on his find,which he presented inLondon in 1912, a year afterthe rediscovery of Machu Picchu byHiram Bingham. Reception, by an
international

Poma begins by rewritingtheChristian history of the Adam and Eve (fig. 1), incorporating the world from Amerindians into it as offspringof one of the sons of Noah. He identifies ages ofChristian historythathe five links in parallelwith the fiveages of canonical Andean

confused. It took twenty-five years fora facsimileedition to appear, in Paris. Itwas not till the late of thework habitsgaveway to interpretive 1970s, as positivistreading studiesand colonial elitisms to postcolonial pluralisms, Western scholars foundways of readingGuaman that Pomas New Chronicle and Good Government as the
extraordinary letter got terrible intercultural tour de force that itwas. years too late, a miracle The and a there, only 350

congress

of Americanists,

was

apparently

with thatdiverge history?separate but equal trajectories not Noah and reintersect with Columbus butwith Saint Bartholomew,claimed tohave precededColumbus in the Americas. In a couple of hundred pages,Guaman Poma
constructs a veritable encyclopedia of Inca and pre-Inca

EtPPiMERMWOO

tragedy. to say a few more I propose text, in order to

WEVA
this erstwhile thoughts about

words lay out

about some

unreadable

zones. in writingand literacy what I like to call the contact

I use meet, this term to refer to social clash, and grapple with spaces where other, often cultures in con each

textsof highly asymmetricalrelationsof power, such as

colonialism,

out in world today.Eventually Iwill many parts of the

use many under the term to reconsider of us rely on challenge in the models and of community and that teaching theorizing a little more today. But first is known about that are

slavery,

or their aftermaths

as

they

are lived

about Gua

man Pomas giant letter Philip III. to

Insofar as anything

him at all, Guaman

Poma exemplified the sociocultural complexities pro

duced

Andean who claimed noble Inca descent and who had adopted (at least in some sense) Christianity.He may as haveworked in theSpanish colonial administration an
or assistant to a tax collector? interpreter, scribe, Spanish as a mediator, in short. He he learned to write from says

by conquest

and

empire.

He

was

an

indigenous

I--^-J

Fig. 1.Adam

and Eve.

Mary customs, laws, social forms, public but also offices, and both audiences and

Louise Pratt

35

The depictions resemble dynastic leaders. Europeanman

ners and customs

history,

meticulous detailwith which knowledge in Inca society

was stored on

description,

reproduce

the

Guaman PomasNew Chronicle isan instance what I of have proposed to call an autoethnographic by text, which I mean a textin which people undertake todescribe them
selves

quipusznd

in the oral memories

of elders.

munity. Their reception is thus highly indeterminate. a Such texts oftenconstitute marginalizedgroups point of into the dominant circuits of print culture. It is entry dimensions,which in biography in itsautoethnographic
some respects interesting to think, for example, of American slave auto

metropolitan

the speakers

own

com

are those havemade of them. Thus ifethnographictexts

in which

in ways

that engage

with

representations

others

The conceptmight help explain graphical tradition. why some of the earliestpublished Chicanas took writing by the form of folkloricmanners and customs sketches written inEnglish and published in English-language newspapers or folklore magazines (seeTreviiio). Auto
ethnographic collaborations representation between people, often involves concrete literate ex as between

distinguish

it from Euramerican

autobio

themselvestheir others (usually theirconquered others), to definedothersconstructin response or indialoguewith

texts are not, then, what Autoethnographic are of as autochthonous forms of expres usually thought sion or the Andean (as self-representation quipus were). those of idioms of the metropolis to create or the con texts. autoethnographic texts are representations that the so

European

metropolitan

subjects

represent

to

or slavesand abolitionist intellectuals, betweenGuaman

Poma Often, and the Inca elders who Poma, were his informants. than one as in Guaman it involves more

Rather they involve a selective collaboration with and to These aremerged or infiltrated varying queror. degrees
with idioms indigenous to intervene in intended self-representations modes of under metropolitan to works are often addressed appropriation

language. and resistance temporary account

In recent decades have

creation

critique, autoethnography, in a con with reconnected writing of the contact zone, the testimonio.

Guaman PomasNew Chronicleendswith a revisionist

of the

standing. Autoethnographic

shouldhave been a peaceful encounterof equalswith the mindless greed both, but for the potential forbenefiting of the Spanish. He parodies Spanish history.Following
contact with the Incas, he writes,

Spanish

conquest,

which,

he

argues,

was a great commotion. All day and at night in their

dreams the

"In all Castille,

there

kite

plata, oro, platadel Piru'" ("Indies, Indies, gold, silver, gold, silverfromPeru") (fig.2). The Spanish, he writes, brought nothing of value to sharewith theAndeans,
nothing

Spaniards

were

saying

'Yndias,

yndias,

oro,

oro y plata, yndias, a lasYndias, Piru" ("with the lustfor gold, silver,gold and silver, Indies, the Indies, Peru") words as an example of a conquered (372). I quote these
subject using the conquerors oppositional to construct language of the conquerors representation a

"but armor and guns

con

la codicia

de oro, plata,

own speech.Guaman Poma mirrorsback to the Spanish (in their language,which is alien to him) an image of
surely recognize. ing, and Such are the dynamics of language, writ in contact zones.

parodic,

themselves that theyoften suppress and will therefore

representation

Fig. 2. Conquista. Meeting of Spaniard and Inca. The Inca says inQuechua, "You eat this gold?" Spaniard replies in Spanish, "We eat this gold."

theAndean regionwith a passionate denunciation of Spanish exploitation and abuse. (These, at the timehe was writing, were decimating thepopulation of the j^ndes at a genocidal rate. In fact,the potential lossof the labor
force became a main cause for reform

The second halfof the epistlecontinues thecritique. It is titled Buen gobierno justicia 'Good Government and y and combines a descriptionof colonial society in Justice'

Guaman Pomas most implacablehostility is invokedby

of the system.)

36

Arts of theContact Zone

or the clergy, followed by thedreaded corregidorest colo nial overseers(fig.3). He also praises good works, Chris men where he finds them,and offers tianhabits, and just
at

ment and justice." The Indies, he argues, should be a administeredthrough collaborationof Inca and Spanish elites. The epistle endswith an imaginary question-and answer session inwhich, in a reversalof hierarchy,the king isdepicted askingGuaman Poma questions about
how to reform

views length his

as to what

constitutes

not simplyimitate reproduceit;he selectsand or adapts it Andean lines to express (bilingually, mind you) along Andean interests and aspirations. Ethnographers have
used the term transculturation to describe

"good

govern

wherebymembers of subordinated ormarginal groups selectand inventfrom materials transmitted a domi by

nant or

processes

FernandoOrtiz in the 1940s, aimed byCuban sociologist

to replace overly used reductive assimilation and concepts of acculturation to characterize culture under conquest.

metropolitan

culture. The

term, originally

coined

the Andean scribe from the many lines thatdivide the which the subordinatedsubject monarch, and in imperial single-handedly gives himselfauthorityin the colonizers extraordinarytextdid getwritten?but
not, for the letter never reached language and verbal repertoire. In a way, itworked?this

the empire?a

dialogue

imagined

across

While subordinatepeoples do not usually controlwhat emanatesfrom thedominant culture, do they determine
to

in a way itdid

what itgetsused for. Transculturation,likeautoethnogra

phy, is a

varying

extents what

gets absorbed

into their own

and

its addressee.

To grasp the importofGuaman Pomas project, one needs to keep in mind that the Incas had no systemof Their huge empire is said to be theonly known writing. instanceof a full-blownbureaucratic state societybuilt
and administered without

As scholarshave realized only relativelyrecently, the

character of Guaman Pomas text is intri

phenomenon

of the contact

zone.

transcultural

written compo catelyapparent in itsvisual aswell as its nent. The genre of the four hundred line drawings is
European?there resentational seems to have been no tradition of rep drawing among the Incas?but in their exe

structs his textby appropriatingand adapting pieces of the representationalrepertoire the invaders. of He does

writing.

Guaman

Poma

con

cution they Andean systems spatial of deploy specifically In figure1, for instance, Adam isdepicted on the left hand side below the sun, while Eve ison the right-hand side below the moon, and slighdylowerthan Adam. The two are divided by the ofAdams digging stick. diagonal InAndean spatial symbolism, thediagonal descending from the sun marks thebasic lineof power and authority male from female,dominant dividing upper from lower, from subordinate. In figure2, the Inca appears in the same position asAdam, with theSpaniard opposite, and the two at the sameheight. In figure depictingSpanish 3, abuses of power, the symbolicpattern is reversed. The dominance, but Spaniard is in a high position indicating on the "wrong" (right-hand)side.The diagonals of his lance and thatof the servant mark out doing the flogging a line of real, power.The Andean illegitimate,though continue to occupy the left-handside of thepic figures
ture, but clearly as victims. Guaman Poma wrote that the symbolism that express Andean values and aspirations.1

Spanish conquest had produced "unmundo al reves" 'a world in reverse/

In sum, Guaman contact zone. If one text is a Pomas truly product of the thinks of cultures, or literatures, as dis

crete, coherently man Pomas

text, and

de minas. Fig. 3. Corregidor labor force. indigenous

Catalog

of Spanish

abuses

of

appearsanomalous or chaotic?as itapparendydid to the European scholarsPietschmann spoke to in 1912. Ifone does not think culturesthis of Guaman Pomas way, then text is simply as the was Andean region heterogeneous, and remains today.Such a text isheterogeneouson itself

structured, monolingual edifices, Gua indeed any work, autoethnographic

Mary the reception tact zone. end as well as the end: it will read more

Louise Pratt

37

to very differently people indifferent positions in thecon

Because it deploys European and Andean sys tems of meaning making, the letter necessarily means

production

visible, more

Poma's text, and, like Guaman pressing, to those who once would have decipherable ignored them in defense of a stable, centered sense of knowledge reality.

and

to differently bilingualSpanish-Quechua speakersand to monolingual speakers in either language; thedrawings

mean Andean, or to monocultural readers, Spanish differently to the and to bicultural readers responding structures embodied in Andean genres. symbolic European with of considerable bilingualism. intercultural Unfortunately, and

Contact and Community

The idea of the contact zone is intended that underlie in part to con much and of the culture ago,

In the Andes in the early 1600s thereexisteda literate

competence such a commu

trast with thinking

ideas of community about language, in the academy.

public degrees man note

communication, A couple

nitydid not exist in theSpanish courtwith which Gua

Poma was to make contact. It is to trying interesting that in the same year Guaman Poma sent off his let Peruvian was adopted in official cir

thinkingabout the linguistictheories I knew, I tried to

make sense of a Utopian social were quality of that often seemed to characterize Languages coherent petence analyses language seen as in living "speech a by the academy. communities,"

that gets done

of years

cles in Spain as the canonical Christian mediation between the Spanish conquest and Inca history. Itwas anotherhuge encyclopedicwork, titled theRoyal Com
of the Incas, written, tellingly, by a mestizo, mentaries Inca

ter, a text by another

as and thesetended to be theorized discrete,self-defined,

entities, held or grammar This together by abstract homogeneous and equally com among commu shared identically other of

all the members. nity seemed way book ble modern Benedict

Garcilaso de la mestizo half brother who Vega. Like the

Guaman Poma taught was the son of an Inca princess had lived in Spain since he was spoke Quechua, Spanish, life'swork without his book to read and write, and a Inca Garcilaso Spanish official, and seventeen. he too Though in iswritten standard eloquent, While the Guaman Poma's Royal Commentaries and present hierarchy.2 The today

idea of the speech things, themselves

to reflect, among nations conceive calls

the Utopian as what In a

Anderson

"imagined observes calls he

communities."3 that with

of that title, Anderson exception of what

the possi villages," inwhich

"primordial entitles

illustrations. unread,

human

communities

exist as

imagined

sat somewhere

was edited and reedited in Spain and the New World, a

mediation ways that coded the Andean past in thought unthreatening persists: the to colonial Royal

"will never know most of their fellow-members, people meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives are the image of their communion." he goes on "Communities to say, "not by their fal

textual

remainsa staple itemon PhD reading lists in Spanish, New Chronicle and Good Government, while the despite
the ready availability of several fine editions, is not. How text did not reach its desti Poma's ever, though Guaman currents the transcultural of expression it nation, to evolve in the Andes, as continued still exemplifies they do, less inwriting than in storytelling, ritual, song, dance drama, painting and sculpture, dress, textile art, forms of governance, art forms. All intractable, religious express belief, and many other vernacular contact and the effects of conflict. transculturation, mediation, critique, collabora

hierarchy

Commentaries

are but in sity/genuineness, by thestyle which they imag

ined" features (15; Anderson three mine). proposes emphasis that characterize the style inwhich the modern boundaries"; it is second,

distinguished,"

nation is imagined. First, it is imagined as limited,by

"finite, if elastic, sovereign-, and, third, imagined as it is imagined as "a fraternal, deep,

horizontalcomradeship"for which millions of people are "not somuch tokill aswillingly todie" (15).As prepared fraternal metonymically in thefinite,sovereign, figureof
the citizen-soldier. Anderson argues that European bourgeoisies were dis the image suggests, the nation-community is embodied

long-term

unequal

Autoethnography, tion, bilingualism,

parody,

denunciation,

are vernacular imaginary dialogue, expression?these some of the literate arts of the contact zone. Miscompre dead hension, letters, unread master incomprehension, absolute are of pieces, heterogeneity meaning?these some of the in the contact zone. perils of writing They all live among us in the transnationalized today metropolis

main acy play a central role in this argument. Anderson instrument that made tains, as have others, that the main bourgeois nation-building italism. The commercial ous European the projects circulation he possible was

tinguishedby theirability to "achieve solidarityon an essentiallyimaginedbasis" (74) on a scale far greaterthan thatof elitesof other timesand places. Writing and liter

of books was

print cap in the vari what first

of theUnited States and are becoming more widely

vernaculars, invisible

argues,

created

networks

that would

eventually

38

Arts of theContact Zone the literate elites and those ruled as started what out it was in. A few days into the term, we asked he like at the new school. "Well," and they have him said,

constitute

nations. (Estimatesare that 180million bookswere put into circulation inEurope between theyears 1500 and 1600 alone.) Now obviously this style of imagining of modern
nations, as Anderson describes

they

know why they're nicer?" "Why?" I asked. "So you'll obey all the rules theydon't have," he replied.This is a very
coherent analysis with considerable not tory power, have given. but probably and explana elegance the one his teacher would

"they're

a lot nicer,

a lot less rules. But

often profess but systematically fail to realize. com nation as of the modern The prototype imagined to me, mirrored in ways it seemed munity was, people the societies thought Many views about

which liberty, embodyingvalues likeequality,fraternity,

it, is strongly

Utopian,

When

is linguistic(or literate)interaction described in

games, are moves, or moves actually named scripts, usually as part of the other lan

terms of orderliness, only legitimate

world in which language unifiedand homogeneous social

exists as a shared patrimony?as precisely, a shared An universally image of imagining community. is also part of the picture. The prototypical mani literacy individual adult native face-to-face (as in Saus a device, for

and the speech community. language out how modern commentators have pointed a assume as code and competence of language

where legitimacy isdefined from the point of system,

in of what authority?regardless see themselves as doing. Teacher-pupil of view of the teacher and

view of the party parties might

guage, forexample, tends to be described almost entirely word from thepoint of view of pupils and pupiling (the
from the point teaching, not

of festation language isgenerallytakento be the speechof

sure's famous diagram) and speakers in monolingual, short, the most even monodialec

tal situations?in

socially. The linguistically one could Now munication. that assumed that the most different

case homogeneous same goes forwritten com a theory certainly imagine argued, for instance, situation a for understand

even exist, If a the though thing certainly does). as a social world and is analyzed unified classroom stu with respect to the teacher, whatever homogenized the teacher specifies is invisible dents do other than what doesn't or anomalous as well. On to the analysis. This several occasions my can be true in practice fourth the one grader, all the rules they didn't have, was given writ busy obeying a series that took the form of answering ing assignments to build up a These of questions questions paragraph. over

things?that

revealing speech was one involving ing language two of whom spoke languages others. want define In

of people each gathering a third and understood

and held only one language in commonwith any of the

on what of language It depends you workings to to see first, on what you choose see or want to as normative. keeping with autonomous, of use fraternal models commonly of com that

of with the interests those in oftenasked him to identify

authorities. him?parents, He invariably teachers, sought ways doctors, public to resist or subvert

power

munity, principles normally people

analyses

language and of cooperation

assume

for instance, called One these assignments. assignment, students were invention." The "a helpful for imagining to the asked to write single-sentence responses following questions:

in effect. Descriptions in conversation,

are shared understanding of interactions between medical and bureau

classrooms,

cratic settings, readily take it for granted that the situation set of rules or norms shared a is by all single governed by The analysis focuses then on how those rules participants. an or fail to orderly, coherent exchange. produce produce to are often used and moves Models games involving conflicts or sys whatever interactions. Despite describe are in the same game and that all participants engaged it is. But that the game is the same for all players. Often it often is not, as, for example, when of course speakers are from different classes or cultures, or one party is exer to it or ques is and another submitting cising authority to a new it. Last year one of my children moved tioning

would help you? What kind of invention How would ithelp you? Why would you need it? What would it look like? Would otherpeople be able to use italso? What would be an inventiontohelp your teacher?
What would reply be an invention read as follows: A grate adventchin would be a Some inventchinsareGRATE!!!!!!!!!!! My inventchin would put every thingyou learnat school inyour brain. shot that me now!! Iwould need It would help me by letting graduate right me play with my freinds,go on vacachin itbecause it would let to help your parents?

Manuel's

tematic social differences might be inplay, it isassumed

and school that had more open classrooms elementary school he more flexible curricula than the conventional

and, do fun a lotmore. Itwould look like a regular shot.Ather use to.This inventchin would help my teacherpar peaple would ents get away from a lot ofwork. I think a shot like this would be GRATE!

Mary the the assignment was received the usual

Louise Pratt

39

Despite

starto indicatethe task in had been fulfilled an acceptable

No recognition the attempt available, however, of the to be critical or contestatory, of authority. On to par

spelling,

Americas and the multiple culturalhistories (including

European ones) that have attracted intersected a here. As you can student body. imagine, not like a com The classroom functioned homogeneous or a horizontal a contact zone. alliance but like munity Every text we read stood in historical rela specific single to the students in the class, but the range and tionships were enormous. in variety of historical relationships play the course very diverse

way.

humor, ody luck was

the structures

that score, Manuel's

Are teachers has nity? supposed to feel thattheirteaching

been most successful when

Poma's. What only slightly better than Guaman is the place of unsolicited discourse, parody, oppositional commu in the classroom resistance, critique imagined they have eliminated

such

Such questions may be hypothetical, because in the United States in the 1990s,many teachersfind them
selves less and less able to do that even if

own and unified the social world, probably in their things Who wins when we do that? Who loses? image?

we Everybodyhad a stake innearlyeverything read,but the rangeand kind of stakes varied widely.
we had ever done, the most exciting teaching at how the hardest. We were struck, for example, in a contact zone anomalous the formal lecture became and also (who can forget Ata It was

The composition of thenational collectivityis changing

and being so are the as Anderson styles, imagined. In the 1980s put in many it, in which it is nation-states,

they

want

to.

down huallpa throwing the Bible because it would not speak to

Are teachers their teaching has been most successful when theyhave

national syntheses thathad retained imagined hegemonic

began to dissolve. Internal social groups with as histo

him?). The lecturer's traditional (imagined)

the class's of a

supposedto feel that

force

riesand lifeways different from theofficialones began

insisting izenship, on those histories and lifeways part of their cit in the as the very mode of their membership

task?unifying in the world eyes by means that

national collectivity.In theirdialogues with dominant

institutions, many groups

monologue

rings

made demands beyond thoseof represen belonging that

tation and basic we started from above. In universities rights granted to hear, "I don't want you to let me be just as it does to anyone other else." things, Institutions rhetorics of

began

asserting

a rhetoric

of

equally coherent, reveal true for all, ing, and forging munity, with an ad hoc com homogeneous to one's

unifiedthesocial world, probably in

their own image?

shouldbelong here, Iwant tobelonghere; thisinstitution

to me as much have responded with, among across

respect

own words?this anomalous in the and

task became unimaginable. that whatever received in

not

only

Instead, one

but impossible one had to work going to be ways

knowledge

said was

diversity moment

and multiculturalism is up for grabs

whose the

import

at this

are These shifts being livedout by everyone working in

education one way tional today, and or another. are everyone Those challenged of us committed is by them in to educa as that

ideological

spectrum.

systematically that we were neither The on very nature

radically heterogeneous able nor entitled to prescribe. put ideas and in the class had their culture

of the course

identities the experi and

the line. All

the students of hearing

notion finds itself besieged on thepublic agenda.Many

of those who quiescent, ideal, govern us display, openly, their interest in a Even as an to ignorant, manipulable of an enlightened have from the national disappeared the concept an intense and debate electorate.

democracy

particularly

challenged

ways thathorrifiedthem; all the students objectified in saw theirroots tracedback to legaciesof both gloryand
shame; all the students experienced and face-to-face occasionally of community values and the of synthesis, itwas easy to the positives; the hope forget that kinds of once fact, for instance, marginalization were taken for gone. Virtually every student was granted rance and incomprehension, ity,of others. In the absence the igno the hostil

ence, for example,

discussed

citizenry imagination.

seems A

cou

where Iworkwent through ple of yearsago theuniversity

wrenching over a narrowly been defined requirement that had instituted

Western-culture

therein 1980. Itkept boiling down to a debate over the

ideas of national imagined community. patrimony, In the end, cultural citizenship, the requirement and was

transformedinto a much more broadly defined course

called change, Cultures, a new Ideas, Values.4 course was designed In the context that centered of the on the

him or her in it. with rage, and Along incomprehension, moments there were of wonder and pain, exhilarating and new wisdom?the revelation, mutual understanding, contact zone. The and revelations joys of the sufferings to be sure, were, at different moments experienced by every student. No one was excluded, and no one was safe.

world described with having theexperienceof seeing the

40

Arts of theContact Zone The fact that no one was safe made all of us involved in

appreciate call "safe houses." We intellectual as horizontal,

the course

the importance of what we came to used the term to refer to social and groups can constitute themselves with

Notes
'For an introduction in English to these and other aspects of Pomas work, see Rolena Adorno. Adorno and Mercedes

spaces where

Guaman

homogeneous,

sovereign

communities

of trust, shared understandings, temporary high degrees iswhy, as we of oppression. This from protection legacies curricula should not seek to replace realized, multicultural ethnic or women's studies,

Lopez-Baralt pioneered the study ofAndean symbolic systems inGua man Poma. was as 2It is farfromclear that theRoyal Commentaries benign as the seemed to assume. The book certainly played a role inmain Spanish Andes. In and aspirations of indigenous elites in the taining the identity themid-eighteenth century, a new edition of theRoyal Commentaries was a suppressed by Spanish authorities because itspreface included Sir Walter Raleigh that theEnglish would invadePeru and prophecy by restorethe Incamonarchy. 3The discussion of community here is summarized frommy essay "LinguisticUtopias." "For information about this program and the contents of courses write Program inCultures, Ideas, Values (CIV), Stanford taught in it, CA 94305. Univ., Stanford,

groups need places forhealing legaciesof subordination,

and mutual shared recognition, safe houses inwhich to construct claims on the world understandings, knowledges, can then contact zone. into the that they bring course remains to our in the Americas Meanwhile, job out how to make that crossroads the best site for figure arts of the contact zone. These will include, we are sure,

for example. Where

there are

We are lookingforthepedagogical learningthatitcan be.

with the ideas, exercisesin storytelling and in identifying

interests, histories, transculturation and attitudes of others; work and collaborative and in experiments in the arts of

Works

Cited_

critique, parody, and comparison (including unseemly

comparisons the between elite and vernacular cultural forms); redemption of the oral; ways to move for people out to engage

Adorno, Rolena. Guaman Poma de Ayala: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru. Austin: U ofTexas P, 1986. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflectionson theOrigins Nationalism. London: Verso, 1984. and Spread of Garcilaso de laVega, El Inca. Royal Commentaries of theIncas. 1613. Austin: U ofTexas P, 1966. Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. El primer nueva coronica y buen Murra and Rolena Adorno. Mex gobierno.Manuscript. Ed. John ico: Siglo XXI, 1980.

with suppressedaspects of history (including theirown

histories), authenticity; ways ground of 0/rhetorics across lines rules for communication into and

of difference hierarchythatgo beyond politenessbut and

maintain important in mutual a respect; systematic approach of cultural mediation. These concept to the all arts were

in every room at the extraordinary Pittsburgh con play ference on literacy. I learned a lot about them there, and I am thankful.

Pratt,Mary Louise. "Linguistic Utopias." The Linguistics of Writing. Ed. Nigel Fabb et al.Manchester: Manchester UP, 1987. 48-66. Trevino, Gloria. "Cultural Ambivalence tion."Diss. StanfordU, 1985. in Early Chicano Prose Fic