Forwarded to the list w/ permission fr/ the "author" by JMCF:
 
        To Jim, Malea, Serena:  You do have a reader out here, reading textual
space for pleasure.  On "The ARts of the Contact Zone," I've read/used Pratt's p
   iece, but I wonder if we (mis)shape the heterogeneous space she writes about
(which emerges from colonialism and imperialism) into a reading space,
if we don't include some theories of Commodity Exchange, Colonization,
Imperialism, etc. and if we don't work out how these play  into reading/
representation?  Do we risk minimizing or smoothing over all the
particularities that a "contact zone" implies?  One way to avoid universalizing
;might be to construct a reading cluster of texts that actually (historically)
occured ina contact zone?  Also thinking about the Church and reading:
Reading of the "Book of Nature" to find confirmation of "TRUTH" comes to
mind also--that is, "reading" has historically also referred to confirming
(through the workings of Divine Afflatus?)what was already believed, rather
than constructing meaning, right?  Reading as "containment"?  Yours in
thinking, Cindy L-W