More wrote about in 1 516: an ideal society in which everyone is considered equal, the golden age never ends, and the same religion is practiced among all citizens. "Utopia" is the general term to describe the perfect world; although, some writers and scholars use different diction to describe utopias. Benedict Anderson, a retired Cornell professor, coined the term "imagined communities. These communities consist of ".
.. Imagined entities in which people Will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion" (Pratt 493). Anderson likes to think that communities are only distinguished by what the citizens imagine them to be.
Mary Louise Pratt, writer of Arts of the Contact Zone, agrees with Anderson in some ways; on the contrary, she argues that communities are utopian in that they prefer to practice equality, promote freedom, and obey the passive morality that exists within the cracks of the community.Pratt states that the societies are hypocrites in the sense that they promote these utopian ideals, but they never practice them. According to Pratt, language is used as a "device, precisely, for imagining community' (Pratt 494). She goes on to argue that we, as readers, should learn to recognize that not everyone is equal; that we need to understand and value differences in communities. I completely agree with Pratt, because I have lived in a community that she would characterize as a typical utopian society, unable to recognize that heterogeneous communities exist.I was born and raised in an average sized town, Peters Township, and as long as Vive lived, we called our town "the bubble.
" When there are 22,000 people and 500 of that being non-white, we didn't know what reality was. "The bubble" prevented us from interacting with people that speak a different language, have different ethnicities, or practice religions other than Christianity. Most of the residents were middle to upper class families that consisted of a business man father, a stay at home beautiful mother, two to three spoiled children, and numerous elderly people that wanted nothing to change within the community.Of course we thought we were al free, equal, and fraternal; however, drama existed everywhere from high school all the way to adulthood. In high school, everyone was either good friends or at least associates with each other; although, rumors and stories would spread, and the utopia we once thought existed would turn into a war zone.
The same process would occur with the parent's of families. Jokingly, I liked to call the dramatically mothers in my town "The Real Housewives of Peters Township," because in "The Real Housewives" TV series, the women are friends for one-second, then turn on each other the next.Anderson could point a finger and say, "That is exactly what I view as an imagined community IT nee saw now my town acted towards can toner. In Peters Township, we were lucky enough to all have something in common; however, without diversity of culture, no one understands that the world is not the homogeneous community that we lived in. Since we were accustomed to the Caucasian, Christian and wealthy lifestyle, no one wanted to be subjected to the outside world; hence, "the bubble" was created.
If we were to clash with other cultures, like I currently am at the University of Pittsburgh, the majority of us would e afraid to change our ways.When referencing Prate's "contact zone," we know it consists of two or more cultures coming together, clashing, and adapting each other's practices. Within the contact zone is an oppressed culture and a culture that is the oppressor. Pratt uses the example set by Feline Gunman Pomp De Lass's The First New Chronicle and Good Government. Gunman Pomp, an Inca who directs the writing toward Spain's King Philip Ill, wrote in The First New Chronicle as an ethnography's. Ethnographers writing describes a culture based on what other cultures view it as; for instance,Gunman Pomp describes Spain's greed and corrupt power.
This form of writing is often used by the oppressed culture inside of contact zones because they want the oppressing culture to know how they feel about the conflict between them. As a resident of Peters Township's utopian society for 19 years, I have started to clash and learn cultures of many different people here at Pit. It wasn't difficult for me to change atmospheres because I have traveled recently to Mexico and Europe, and learned copious amounts of information from residents and tourists from around the world.Without this experience, I know that most people from Peters Township, when conflicted within a contact zone, would refuse to accept the transfiguration process.
This process entails choosing several aspects of the oppressor's culture within the contact zone, and adapting them into your own culture. Since citizens of Peters Township are excessively biased towards their own cultural methods, they are very cautious when learning a new cultures' practices; consequently, they will most likely reject transfiguration.In Arts of the Contact Zone, Pratt presents the challenge professors had at the university she worked at. The professors were to describe America and its' interactions with other countries and cultures.
She explained how the lectures turned into their own culture zone because the original task was to unify each culture involved and try to teach by the meaner of a monologue that was completely uniform amongst communities; however, this task was "... Not only impossible but anomalous and unimaginable" (Pratt 496).If she said something, it would be interpreted differently by each person based on their culture.
Within this course, the students learned about their culture through ethnographers, but these writings objectified them and horrified them. They learned what others viewed their culture as, and it made the students angry. Although furious, they wanted to discover more about the other cultures that exist in the world. Pratt describes this as the "...
Joys of the contact zone" (Pratt 497).The class was a success, because the students were faced with the reality that not everyone on Earth viewed America as a promise-land like we do. This result enabled the students to understand that no one is safe from ridicule, but that the ridicule allows them to ignore the conflict and transliterate Walton ten contact zone. The method that Pratt used to be completely heterogeneous with her lectures would have not been easy in Peters Township. Everyone came from the same culture; therefore, no one would interpret the information differently.Either the whole class would be offended, or the whole class would be intrigued.
This culture bias is what defines a utopian society, because everyone within the community has an ethnocentric view of the world; with that being said, societies view themselves as utopias, but never come face to face with reality. Pratt explains that this problem exists throughout the world, and the solution is to expose people to the aspects of he contact zone; then, figuratively put them inside the zone to experience the transfiguration process.Nearly 99 percent of students that graduate from Peters Township attend college their next year, and it seems that a large majority of the kids struggle to make friends. I suppose that the lack of exposure to separate cultures prevents them from opening up, and branching out to different people. For instance, fourteen students from my graduating class attend the University of Pittsburgh, and only a few, including me, are making new friends. The others can't seem to associate with people outside of their fellow Peters Township classmates.
Pratt would be furious to hear this; subsequently, she would accuse it on the lack of education about contact zones. After her experience with the class at her university, Pratt thought that everyone should be oppressed within the contact zone as well as subjugated by ethnographers. With a full understanding of how others view your culture, you are able to accept other cultures through "cultural mediation" (Pratt 497). Peters Township, after being oppressed within a contact zone, would be more likely to accept that other cultures are different, but not too different that they can't apply the other cultures into their own.
