September 11, 2015 - 14:18
I move a lot. I currently live in New York City, but I was born in Arizona and have lived in multiple homes between then and now. Moving is mostly fun and exciting, but it has its difficulties. Perhaps one of the more arduous, painstaking difficulties is keeping contact with old friends.
I had a best friend when I was six. She and I would play games together, visit each other's' homes, invite each other to birthday parties, and read the same books in class. But when I moved again to a new state and a new home, we were heartbroken. She cried to her mother, and I begged my mother for a way we could keep in contact. Our mothers suggested becoming pen pals.
The concept seemed simple. We'd both write each other letters detailing the interesting parts of our lives or any relevant news we had to share, send it in the mail, and eagerly wait for the response. Simple.
For the first five years, our letter writing was a breathless, excited frenzy. We'd write pages and pages for each other, attach along our favorite stickers and stones, and kiss the envelopes closed with innocent affection and dedication. Sometimes we wouldn't even wait for a response and would just get started right ahead with our next letters. It became our full-time job.
Soon, we entered middle school. Around this time, technology began playing a stronger and more prominent role in our lives. She was caught up before I was. I'd write her long, flowery letters – only to receive a hastily-written, short response many months later. Writing letters became somewhat of an afterthought for her. In one of the last letters she wrote me, she asked, “This gets so old sometimes. Do you have Facebook?”
I didn't then. I soon made an account. I'm on Facebook now. As of 2015, we are friends on Facebook and haven't spoken in five long years.
In “Arts of the Contact Zone” by Mary Louise Pratt, a contact zone is defined as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.” Pratt argues that contact zones can be positive or negative. For example, a country taking over a native community serves as oppression rather than an exchange of ideas. She mentions the specific account of Peruvian author Guaman Poma, who wrote a twelve-hundred page letter to King Philip of Spain as a message from the conquered to the conquerer. Poma’s intention was to share the history of Andean civilization and his perspective of the damage that colonial Spanish rule had brought. Yet the letter was written in ungrammatical Spanish and Quechua, and never reached its final destination. On page 34, Pratt says of the letter, “No one, it appeared, had ever bothered to read it or figured out how.”
My scenario of long, forgotten letters mimics Poma’s situation with the King. Like Poma, I had the intention of sharing my thoughts and opinions with someone who I believed was equally vested in them. A difference between Poma and me lies in the history of our relationships with our respective audiences. While I had spent several years earlier happily exchanging and receiving letters from my friend, Poma had no previous history with the King. The seemingly obvious barrier between my friend and I was geographic distance. A less obvious, almost deceptively sly barrier between us was technology. The most predictable and expected barrier between us was simply the eventual passage of time. On the other hand, the barriers between Poma and the King were both language and misinterpretation.
Contact zones supposedly exist within contexts of asymmetrical power. This is clear in the relationship between King Philip and Poma, or conqueror and conquered. Yet in my own scenario, the power structures are less defined. As the individual who caught up to technology first, my friend had the higher status of power. She had the upper hand, did not become the one putting effort into unread letters, and came to terms with the end of our letter-exchanging years much earlier than I did. Meanwhile, I was the individual sacrificing time and effort into letters and finally received an unsatisfactory outcome. Poma and I were both the lesser powers within the dynamics of our scenarios.
My own contact can bring new insight into Poma’s letter to the King. While the advent of technology hindered the contact between my friend and I, it may have improved Potma’s situation. Technology would have allowed Poma to write his letter in very accurate, specific translations. Also technology would have helped ensure that Poma’s letter reached its final destination. The implications suggest that technology would have been a positive force in Poma’s contact.