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