[Warning long post: reflective brainstorming]
 
Hello readers! I have found your work on Pratt helpful, thanks.
 
I want to echo those who have been writing in agreement that we
are brainstorming on the list, thinking things through together,
as it were.  I for one will not violate the contemplative tone
and thoughtful manner of these discussion.  In every case, I
would prefer if those manners could/would continue safely for
all.
 
For my part, I have been able to rethink my earlier posts in
light of your discussions, thanks.  At this point, note please
the tentative and reflective preface, _at this point_, I am
inclined to agree with those who call for caution.  In doing so I
am going to talk here in general rather than the particular so as
to stay with issues rather than persons.  Ok?
 
When I asked if organizing a reading course around the notion of
the contact zone I was thinking about 1) including historical
texts where reading was argued over as a contested site that the
victors (colonial, imperial, cultural) won the control of reading
habits.  It seems to me that who gets to say what reading is is
the one who controls meaning making in historical struggles.  My
research in my bibliography of narratives that depict readers
reading lists many where reading is depicted as a site of
political struggle.  Also, 2) I was thinking about the space
between the reader and the page as a contact zone.  Here it is my
heavy interest in semiotics I raise as a site of struggle in
which the reader is constructed as a subject or subjects or since
you may prefer the reader constructs a heterogeneity of
resistances.
 
Now, I am no longer thinking that Pratt's notion of a contact
zone suffices (or serves us or serves others) if I deflate it to
represent historical struggle over what I call the semiotic or
what may traffic here well enough to call the reader.  I would
agree with those who would withhold the term CZ for those
distinct colonial and imperial, historical and geographic "zones"
or areas of cultural conflict that include or included slavery,
genocide, legalized assault, etc.  I would not call for example
the comp classroom a contact zone, unless those contemporary
historically disenfranchised "zoners" were present.  Even then,
like Pratt, I would call that classroom Contact-Zone-like.  I
would prefer to maintain the historical cultural specificity of
the term: CZ.
 
I am not saying that my image of community is romantic,
homogenous, etc.  I am thinking instead that I need terms I do
not have to represent what I find represented in the narratives
that depict reading per se, but I am not going to traffic in the
deflation of the term CZ to represent all similar or lesser or
like events, such as my comp. classroom.
 
I do not think that I would avoid the knowledge.  I have found
some few autoethnographic narratives that depict readers
reading in historically concrete, geographically specific contact
zones.  But I am going to seek elsewhere for a vocabulary to
represent the semiotic struggle over reading as the right to make
meanings.
 
For one example (may I go on?), I would characterize the Italian
humanist Renaissance as one important moment historically where
reading was a specific site of struggle between say Catholic and
University or Noble cultures.  But I would distinguish those
struggles from the struggles occurring elsewhere even perhaps at
the same time in contact zones.  I would think the vocabulary of
the arts of the contact zone would shed light on the arts of the
humanist rennaisance.  I am thinking of those parodies of Church
figures reading the bible to the peasants, for example:  Pope as
an ass reading to the Bishop as a fox and the monks as apes, for
the popular account.  But, even though the church murdered,
burnt, and slaughtered its enemies during the purge of humnaist
heretics (among others), I would restrain from designating the
historical moment as a contact zone.  I would call the European
invasion of this continent during the 1600s a CZ.  I know the
terms will remain fuzzy, but perhaps that is only best.
 
For example, I would not call the current spacial anxiety called
Postmodernism a CZ, even though that cultural conflict is
characterized by a nostalgia for classicism (as if in response to
that spacial anxiety about cyberspace, the hubble, chaos theory,
etc).  I confess I am alarmed also by the emptying of content
from the term "colonial."
 
So I think my research brings to light narratives from contact
zones, and those narratives do illustrate that reading is one
site of contestation in contact zones.  But it does not logically
follow or necessitate that I characterize all historic
contestations about reading as events in contact zones.  yet, my
research makes clear to me that reading is a site of
contestation.  I seek terms with which to illustrate those
conflicts, to characterize them.  My collected narratives depict
those conflicts in ways that I think will make for interesting
and important ilustration for student readers, and the stories do
inform me about reading in ways that even the most arcane French
theorists have not for me.  They also historicize reading by
depicting it as enactment and containment in ways that would
allow students to grasp and narrate those "abstractions"
concretely.  But, for my part, I think (now) I will locate CZ's
specifically in imperialist and colonial moments and not in the
general acts of reading. Hence, I would hope to avoid the
emptying of the content of the terms: CZ and colonial, as well as
to avoid perhaps mischaracterizing my classroom and terms like
feminism(s), modernism, etc.
 
I see many similarities between reading and the notion of a CZ
but I also see differences beyond any ranking of aggressions or
mimicries (sp?) and any hierarchy of subjections.
 
Finally, my point is this: "What is it but shameful for me as a
white male to say that my reading is a contact zone?"  What is it
but ultra-conservative for me located as I am to say that the act
of reading in general is a contact zone?
 
 
JMCF