Mary Louise Pratt defined her views concerning personal identity formation as a contact zone. According to Pratt, this term is used to “refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other…” (Pratt 34). This statement is very different to what many people assume communities to be. The idealistic notion of a community is a place where people subsist in an equal relation of power and attitudes; this reasoning is mostly made by people outside the alleged community. “Communities are distinguished…not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style which they are imagined” (Pratt 35).
The idea of a neighborhood full of people who have absolutely everything in common sounds like an excerpt from a 1950’s home and garden magazine. Fortunately, communities are exactly how Pratt describes them; they are an area where people with totally different backgrounds and beliefs come in contact with each other to create a puzzle that is sometimes referred to as a community. It is not the community that makes the people in the community who they are, but rather the people who make the community what it is.
Gloria Anzaldúa is a writer that grew up in two different cultures, Mexican and Anglo. She experienced these cultures because she grew up on the borderland of Mexico and southwest Texas. In her essay How to Tame a Wild Tongue Anzaldúa writes about the communities that she lived in and the languages that she spoke there, moreover, how the languages she spoke defined her, instead of letting the community define her. “Her writing argues against the concept of an ‘authentic’ unified, homogeneous culture, the pure ‘Mexican experience’” (Anzaldúa 205).
Throughout the essay Anzaldúa writes about how no longer is there a community that genuinely speaks purely a traditional language. The reason for this is because of the people in the community, it is really hard to find anybody that could be considered pure blood; meaning that the person came from a long line of people from the same culture, religion and race, because languages change with the changing people in the community. Anzaldúa writes about how Chicanos, who used to live in the southwest, now live in the Midwest and the east, but as Anzaldúa writes; “language is a homeland closer then the southwest… and because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak different languages” (Anzaldúa 208).
Some may argue that the different languages spoken came from different communities that taught its residents those traits. “[I] find myself among a people whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense created me…” (Baldwin 165).
Can cultures create people, or do we just imagine that they can? Benedict Anderson in his work Imagined Communities argues that we imagine communities. This is partially true because of the comprehensive communication industry that has made it so easy to find out almost everything about anyone. For this reason people believe that they know each other, even if they have never come into contact with each other.
Pratt’s theory of communal and personal identity can also be tested against James Baldwin’s position in Stranger in the Village. The American author is known for raising racial and sexual issues in his works. The latter are very personal and are concerned with questions of identity. Baldwin’s works explore social and psychological pressures that black and homosexual people are subjected to and the way these pressures influence personal and communal identity.
The author’s search of personal identity starts from the facts from his biography. Baldwin has never seen his biological father, therefore, he was never aware of his origin. The black skin color was an influential factor in the author’s search of his identity. Baldwin’s friendship with Richard Wright, the author of the Native Son made him believe in his abilities as a writer, Baldwin admitted that Wright helped him to clarify a lot for himself.
Another source of support came from African-American painter Beauford Delany. For Baldwin he was the first living proof that a black man could be an artist. I believe that this author’s belief gave him power to preserve his personality.
Baldwin’s novel Stranger in the Village is a biographical story in which he reveals his strivings in the alien community. Living in a remote village of Switzerland, Baldwin finds out that he is the only black person there. The villagers have never seen people with black skin color before. The author comes to this village to create his works here. He realizes that he and his typewriter are unique in the village; people see them as a natural wonder.
When Baldwin hears “Neger” on the streets, he recalls the offensive calls he used to hear on the streets in America. But still, he realizes that children have no harmful intent. Here Pratt’s idea that people make their community is exemplified. People who have never seen a black person tend to hyperbolize their excitement about him/her. As a result of the wrong treatment of people with different skin color racial prejudices and stereotypes arise in the community.
The Stranger in the Village is an outburst of one person’s feelings in the alien society: by example of one black person who feels lonely and out of place in the Swiss village the author presents a general picture of how the blacks might suffer in the world created by the whites. According to the author, a white man will never have the same feelings as a black man, no matter where he/she goes to. The small Swiss village is thus compared to the whole white America. As far as the problem of racial prejudices is concerned, the writer suggests the following description of the Swiss society:
… they move with an authority which I shall never have; and they regard me, quite rightly, not only as a stranger in their village but as a suspect late-comer and they cannot be from the point of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have made the modern world, in effect, even if they do not know it (Baldwin 160).
Also, the author suggests that the black Americans are unique in their feeling of loneliness. He admits that these people differ from other blacks around the world: “The American Negro slave is unique among the black men of the world in that his past was taken from him, almost literally, at one blow.” (Baldwin 165) This is an example of how a sense of personal identity of a black American was influenced by the community where he/she lived which contradicts Pratt’s theory where she states that community has little influence on one’s sense of personal identity.
As the author states, black people have long ago regained their identity and now they are determined to regain their dignity from the white man. It is in the struggle with the whites who always try to keep the blacks away from their identity the latter is formed. Constant stereotyping of the black people led to their understanding the very essence of their humanity. Thus, personal and communal identity of the blacks was formed by the community of the whites.
Coming back to Pratt’s concept of contact zone as a space where cultures overlap one more work comes to my mind. This is the film Pushing Hands directed by Ang Lee. The film demonstrates how two cultures, Chinese and American, coexist in the main character’s world and the way this mixture of cultures influences him.
Communal identity is impossible without establishing interpersonal relationships among its members. Interpersonal relationship, in its turn, is such a fragile thing that needs a complex of efforts people are to make to succeed in. The more successful interconnection between people is established the more strong feeling of communal identity they acquire.
Among all the factors that influence the way the relationships are established, culture occupies a significant position. One can realize the close interconnection between the culture where he or she lives in and interpersonal relationships he or she has, only being put under the circumstances that test his or her ability to understand the foreign culture, to adjust to it and to preserve the relationships notwithstanding the changes that a new culture might bring. The main character of the film mentioned above was able to preserve his sense of personal identity adjusting to a new culture and retaining the traditions of his own one at the same time.
I cannot agree with Pratt’s argument that the idea of community is simply imagined. The fact that this concept is too vague does not mean that it is incorrect. The concept may imply a neighborhood, a school, a profession on the one hand, and entire ethnicity or religion, on the other. What unites them is a common interest or condition. This way or another, we belong to many communities at once, and the reality of life is that these communities either overlap or conflict sharply with each other.
Arguing that the idea of community is not an abstract one Paul S. Callins in his book Community Writing: Researching Social Issues through Composition singles out several typical characteristics of community:
Shared History. There are people, places, or activities that a person and fellow community members are familiar with.
Shared Language or Jargon. Communities often use specialized words that aren’t in common use; for example, when an environmental activist refers to “astroturf” lobbying by industry, a computer programmer refers to a “code compiler, ” or a drummer uses a “crash cymbal.” There may also be slang to refer to things that an outsider would use a more formal term for. For example, someone in England may refer to the Marks & Spencer department store chain as “Marks and Sparks.”
Shared Standards of Behavior. There may be an official or an unspoken code of how things are done or not done in one’s community—how concerns are raised, how problems are dealt with, and how people are expected to act around each other (Collins 2).
I believe that it is in people’s hands to appreciate the value of sense of communal identity and realize the significance of communities they are involved in. Only by striving to understand each member of the community retaining their own personal identity people will experience the welfare the communal identity can result in.
Works Cited
Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1991.
Anzaldúa, G. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Eds. R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-ha, and C. West. MIT Press, 1990. 203-11.
Baldwin, J. “Stranger in the Village.” Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. 159-75.
Collins, Paul S. Community Writing: Researching Social Issues through Composition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession ,1991. 33-40.
Pushing Hands. Dir. Ang Lee. Perfs. Bin Chao, Victor Chan. Ang Lee Productions, 1996.