Arts of the contact zone Essay

In â€Å"†Arts of the Contact Zone† Pratt gets the point across that cultures should recognize the â€Å"contact zone.† By giving examples like Poma’s writing and a homework assignment that her son had, Pratt defines the contact zone as the â€Å"meeting of cultures with asymmetric power.† (p 487) The word â€Å"cultures† refers to every type of group in my eyes, groups such as sports teams and even classrooms. A classroom can be defined as a contact zone because the Teacher and the students are the two cultures, while the power is tilted toward the teachers favor. Pratt shows one of her son’s assignments where he answered the teacher’s questions in the same sequence that they were asked, resulting in little to no freedom to students. I could relate to this because assignments my teachers have given to me are very similar. As school progressed and classes started getting harder, the classroom setting shifted from a â€Å"contact zone† to a â€Å"community.† This allows students like me to have more freedom and creativity in there assignments. Throughout the text I would define â€Å"culture† as any group of people. Before rereading the story I was able to apply culture to most parts of my life. After rereading the story with a different perspective of culture, I make it out as a more global term. Rather than thinking of individual’s lives, I thought more about civilizations. I found that along with the change of perspective comes a whole new output of the text. This is why it is important to reread the text because without doing so it would be challenging to find the meanings of all the words used. If we changed any of the meanings or views of them, it dramatically changes the points the story is trying to get across and the way the story flows.