The Violence of Contact Zones

While reading Lyons, I was struck by two elements surrounding rhetorical sovereignty: 1) the ‘reinterpretation’ that occurs while people seek rhetorical sovereignty, and 2) the conflicting discourse of peoples vs. individual motives/rhetoric. Furthermore, if rhetorical sovereignty is ‘the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse,” how can we begin to give sovereignty to discourses that are contact zones (449-50)? Am I still not understanding contact zones? Aren’t they places of intersection, interaction, intermingling? How then can a discourse truly be fully sovereign and fully dictate its own communicative needs as a contact zone? I know Lyons seeks “a renewed commitment to listening and learning,” but from a purely theoretical standpoint I am having difficulty understanding how sovereignty can occur. It is a paradox that seems a preserving measure which denies the permeating function of discourse.

First of all, hegemony is unrelenting and it is crucial factor in contact zones. (I am truly being the devil’s advocate here, but I do think I have a point here) Example: a bunch of Europeans hop on boats and travel over the Atlantic ocean and ‘discover’ a new chunk of land where people were already living; these Europeans not only physically seek to dominate this land and the native peoples, but also semantically. Hence, in the 1800’s, the ‘U.S.’ (as these European people are now called) and their established law courts begin a “reinterpretation of Indian sovereignty”: physically manifesting domination over native peoples by reworking the meaning behind the word ‘sovereignty’ (451).

Lyons sees the dominating ideology, but I just don’t think he addresses the issue of contact zones very well. I see the understand the desire for rhetorical sovereignty, but I don’t see the plausibility.

Dear Paul,

I got your letter. How are you doing? I am fine. I don’t think you are crazy; I think you are right. How can there be such a thing as the discursive if semantic situations such as the ‘reinterpretation’ of sovereignty exist. Lyons’ whole article is discussing bodily issues, community issues, issues of corporeal interpretation of freedom, rights, and law. For me, the concept of the discursive is way too limiting. Especially in the discussions during this course involving contact zones, establishment of identity involves so much interpretation and reinterpretation. How can contact zones be discursive? How can they be sovereign? And when are we not in a contact zone? Pardon the Syllogism, but. . . if we are always in contact zones and contact zones are non-discursive, then we must always be in the non-discursive. I mean, cmon! We live in the non-discursive--the discursive is just artificial.

I liked your ideas and we should talk some time.

Platonic Love,
Jim

Anyways. . .what I got from Lyons was a lot of miscommunication in the “power imbalances between whites and Indians”(453). Along with the troubles of reconciling individualistic motives and community motives, what do we do with failed attempts to ‘communicate’ about and within Native American rhetoric (i.e. Kennedy and Ballenger)? You re-interpreted Kennedy as portraying differences in the medium; I am going to re-interpret Ballenger as one who (although restrictive in scope and a ‘user’ of Native American culture) constructs a contact zone. Through storytelling, Ballenger tries to communicate non-discursively with native peoples. He uses experiences and imagery to intermingle with the native peoples experiences. Lyons calls it appropriation, but I can’t help but call it communication too—a type of contact zone.

By no means am I advocating dominating ideologies, but I am stating that these dominating ideologies are a part of the contact zone to the degree where I don’t think there can be sovereignty from them. Like Paul, I question Lyons’ function of rhetorical sovereignty because it causes problems in educational environments. It seems like Lyons is not being realistic with the term. If you want to be truly rhetorically sovereign, how do you reconcile the need to communicate with other rhetorics? There has to be a mesh, and (as I agree with Paul again) language does re-colonize the mind in order to communicate across other communities.