Collect and Divide

Kevin (Kyoo Sang) Jo

Professor Ellen Quandahl

RWS 602 Weekly Paper 3

February 11, 2014

1. What are some notable passages that work with those two big conceptual moves, collection and division, all and some, sameness and difference? 

“The family of Man, such at any rate was the original title of the exhibition which came here from the United States. The French have translated it as: The Great Family of Man. So what could originally pass for a phrase belonging to zoology, keeping only the similarity in behaviour, the unity of a species, is here amply moralized and sentimentalized. We are at the outset directed to this ambiguous myth of the human 'community', which serves as an alibi to a large part of our humanism.” (Barthes, 100)  

“Then, from this pluralism, a type of unity is magically produced: man is born, works, laughs and dies everywhere in the same way; and if there still remains in these actions some ethnic peculiarity, at least one hints that there is underlying each one an identical 'nature', that their diversity is only formal and does not belie the existence of a common mould.”

This passage shows the collection viewpoint. This viewpoint is similar to Darwin’s, which is that there is only a difference of degree between man and other animals. In other words, just as other animals in zoo, all the humans are categorized by one unit, one family. Man might be invented by a common mould.

“This myth functions in two stages: first the difference between human morphologies is asserted, exoticism is insistently stressed, the infinite variations of the species, the diversity in skins, skulls and customs are made manifest, the image of Babel is complacently projected over that of the world.” (Barthes, 100)

This passage shows the division viewpoint by using various terms: morphology, exoticism, variation, and diversity. The author pays attention to difference between humans despite the argument of the great family of man. He might emphasize on the fact that the diversity of humans should not be eliminated. 

2. Perhaps the most interesting question “Arts of the Contact Zone” raises for its readers is how, as a writer, Pratt has put together the pieces: the examples from Pratt’s children, the discussion of Guaman Poma and the New Chronicle and Good Government, the brief history of European literacy and the discussion of curriculum reform at Stanford.  What are they keywords that run across these sections? What are the passages that help you trace an argument that cuts across these examples?

Above all, a keyword of Pratt’s essay is definitely “contact zone.” She defined it as “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, 34). Pratt emphasized the importance and necessity of the contact zone by giving examples in places of her article. By exemplifying Guaman Poma’s text, she argued that both the literate arts of the contact zone and the perils of writing in the contact zone are with us in the US today and becoming more visible, more pressing, and more decipherable. She showed her son, Manuel’s react to a new school to point out the following statement: “If a classroom is analyzed as a social world unified and homogenized with respect to the teacher, whatever students do other than what the teacher specifies is invisible or anomalous to the analysis” (Pratt, 38). Pratt described shifts to redefine a course in education. In the end, a more broadly defined course called “Cultures, Ideas, Values” was made. Also, in the context of the change, a new course focused on the Americas and the multiple cultural histories (including European ones) was designed. This new change is helpful to create the contact zone. Pratt explained the effect of new courses as follows: “All the students in the class had the experience, for example, of hearing their culture discussed and objected in ways that horrified them; all the students saw their roots traced back to legacies of both glory and shame; all the students experienced face-to-face the ignorance and incomprehension, and occasionally the hostility, of others” (Pratt, 39). In conclusion, Pratt’s view is that a contact zone allows people to interact between cultures and break the cultural boundary. When a contact zone is created, people are able to gain a new perspective because they are able to interact with people of a different culture.