Intro to Writing Studies
January 30, 2019
Respond : compose a thoughtful, critical response to one reading in the course. Use other readings from the course, or readings you find from journals to support, show nuance, and add complexity.
With increasing globalization and internationalization, it has become even more imperative that students and children as well as teachers, professionals, parents, and all other adults do not become ethnocentric or naively promote the dominant cultural, racial, and ethnic paradigm. In order to help do this, an exposure to a variety of multicultural literature can assist in breaking down traditional power relations in writing to then break down cultural barriers in the world around us. It serves as a powerful tool in enabling students to gain a better understanding of both their own culture and the cultures of others; relationships can then be strengthened, bridging the gap between students from diverse cultural backgrounds. When students can relate global events to the themes, conflicts, and characteristics found in multicultural literature, it helps them to better understand current world issues and therefore develop greater cognitive skills as they learn to engage with and critically evaluate the texts that they read. Pairing multiculturalism with Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone”, as Min-Zhan Lu does in Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone and Patricia Bizzell does in “Contact Zones” and English Studies, can then become not the forcing of a certain multicultural agenda through an assigned set of readings or lectures but the creation of a sort of assembly where students themselves can articulate, and thus perhaps also become more responsive to, differences among themselves that hopefully include more than just culture.
Multicultural literature does not have a set definition but it is often used in context surrounding the socio-cultural experiences of underrepresented cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. Bizzell describes multiculturalism in English studies as “a name for our recognition condition of living on contested cultural ground, and our desire to represent something of this complexity in our study of literature and literacy”. A contact zone, according to Mary Louise Pratt, is “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts the world today” (166). This model encourages critical questioning as to how cultural stereotypes and dominant power structures inform the way students think about their own voice, the audience, and the purpose of writing as a whole. But, do contact zones have to essentially be aggressive? Lu offers a slightly different approach in which she extends these zones to the idea of resistance and change as she explains her interest in students and their relationship to academic discourse:
...I am most interested in doing three things: (1) enabling students to hear discursive voices which conflict with and struggle against the voices of academic authority; (2) urging them to negotiate a position in response to these colliding voices; and (3) asking them to consider their choice of position in the context of the socio-political power relationships within and among diverse discourses and in the context of their personal life, history, culture, and society. (448)
Lu is able to broaden the idea of multicultural literature in a way that Bizzell does not necessarily highlight. Multiculturalism and contact zones in writing should rightfully include and focus on all of those who fall outside the “mainstream” of categories such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, language, etc. How can we further extend this idea of multiculturalism in the contact zone to include all social, economic, and political factors that influence power structures in writing, both in pedagogy and practice, but other fields as well? A factor all too often left out of discussions in writing and many other platforms as well is a person’s physical and mental ability. Not everyone can physically read or write because of a present disability. Could contact zones create awareness in writing studies to offer a more inclusive space for those who rely on things such a brail, subtitles, audio, etc? In extending a focus to be on lesser addressed minority groups and cultures, contact zones may act as an even greater space for discussion, research, and resistance. As Bizzell writes, “difference [is] an asset, not a liability” (166).
Bizzell’s main suggestion is for the reorganization of “English studies not in terms of literary or chronological periods nor ... racial or gender categories, but rather in terms of historically defined contact zones, moments when different groups within the society contend for the power” (167). She uses the term to refer to moments in space and time, rather than abstract spaces in the mind or in literature or literary historical periods. She describes contact zones as “circumscribed in time and space, but with elastic boundaries” (166). Contact zones could last hundreds of years, continuing far into the future and thus can also change continuously. So, in assuming this position, Bizzell’s argument should account for the continuation and flexibility of numerous contact zones in time and place. However, she then lacks to address how we should then organize the goals of pedagogies of the contact zone to reflect seemingly omnipresent contact zones. If we are to attempt to “include all material relevant to the struggles going on” then I would suggest an even more free-flowing approach to these zones that addresses the ever-changing and -present power relations (166). Overall, nevertheless, I hope that the contact zone model will in the end help students create and foster critical awareness and subvert the dominant paradigm as constructed and manifested in academia, writing classrooms, students’ lives, and the broader political context.
Bizzell, P. (1994). " Contact Zones" and English Studies. College English, 56(2), 163-169. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/378727?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Lu, M. Z. (1994). Professing multiculturalism: The politics of style in the contact zone. College composition and communication, 45(4), 442-458. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/358759?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents