Critical Questions

Before Reading. What happens when different groups meet and regard each other as alien, as other?

Taking it Further. Can culture be understood as arising between two contentious groups? Can any one group have a single, separate, and distinct culture? What roles do opposition and resistance to assigned categories of identity play in self-formation and group-formation? How can groups adjust their differences to accommodate each other?

Electronic Fieldwork Readings

Mary Louise Pratt, "Arts of the Contact Zone"
Roger Williams, "A Key Into the Language of America"
Wong Sam and Assistants, "An English-Chinese Phrase Book"
Mary Gaitskill, "On Not Being a Victim"
Sherry Turkle, "TinySex and Gender Trouble"
Art Spiegelman, "MAUS: A Survivor's Tale"
Web Connections for Chapter 3

Mary Louise Pratt, "Arts of the Contact Zone"

What is a "contact zone," in Pratt's terminology? Can you have a contact zone online? In your opinion, does the Internet enhance or inhibit the emergence of contact zones? What kinds of zones have you seen emerge on the Web or Usenet, and what features of Pratt's model do they express, abandon, or adapt? For example, what happens in cyberspace to Pratt's "contacts of highly asymmetrical relations of power"? Do social hierarchies in real life disappear online?

• Communication on the IRC: A Content Analysis

Roger Williams, "A Key Into the Language of America"

Using Internet resources, do some research into the life of Roger Williams and the founding of Rhode Island. Then write a brief essay about how the key relates to Williams' political and religious thought. Limit your topic by focusing on a single idea or cluster of ideas. And do not be alarmed if you find contradiction, as well as congruence, between the key and Williams's well-attested beliefs.

Using Internet resources, do some research on the history of Native American communities associated with the territory now called Rhode Island. What light does this research shed on Williams's key? Or what questions does it raise about the legacies of translation?

• First Nations: Issues of Consequence (Compact Histories)

Wong Sam and Assistants, "An English-Chinese Phrase Book"

Who is currently producing phrasebooks and for whom? Browse the Internet; do you find more of Wong Sam's heirs translating from English to a foreign language or from one English idiom to another? What does your answer reveal about contemporary culture? Finally, examine one example of a modern phrasebook, as you examined the work of Wong Sam and his Assistants. What phrases are most important, and what do these phrases reveal about the culture that produced them?

Mary Gaitskill, "On Not Being a Victim"

After reading Gaitskill's piece it would be interesting to read other individuals' accounts of rape as well as organizational and activist attempts to define rape and categorize types of violence against women. Eve Ensler, the author and performer of The Vagina Monologues, created an organization called V-Day that tries to coordinate movements to stop violence against women throughout the world. Visit the site and study its glossary of terms of violence. How does it define rape, for example? What might be Gaitskill's reaction to the site? Does the site simply construct victimization narratives or does it do something else, something more complex? Also visit the site for your local Rape Crisis Center and explore the same questions.

The V-Day site is also particularly interesting in relation to the idea of cyberspace and in relation to globalization, two key themes throughout Beyond Borders. V-Day raises money by allowing people throughout the world to perform Eve Ensler's play "The Vagina Monologues" without paying any royalties as long as they contribute their proceeds to the V-Day fund. In turn, V-Day gives financial contributions to women's organizations throughout the world (as of 2002, they annually gave more than the entire UN annual budget for women's organizations). However, V-Day has no office space; its small staff works from home and the Website, email communication, and occasional conferences (in different locations globally) constitute the organization. What sort of community or activist movement does V-Day create? To what extent is that a community in cyberspace rather than a local community? Who can be a member? To what extent is it a global community?

• V-day Site

Sherry Turkle, "TinySex and Gender Trouble"

Taking as an example any online space that you have been to (or go to for this assignment), analyze how people play with their online personae. Are people always themselves? Is the idea of self complicated by the online environment? Consider any kind of online environment: chat room, IRC, MUD or MOO, Bulletin Board, or real-time chat space you might be using for your course. In what ways does the behavior of participants change or adapt to virtual spaces? Are identities and personae more flexible, deceptive, playful, vulnerable?

• Lingua Moo

Art Spiegelman, "MAUS: A Survivor's Tale"

There are extensive resources on the World Wide Web dealing with the Holocaust. Look at some of the personal narratives online by survivors and children of survivors. Do you see any parallels to Spiegelman's treatment? Are there places in the narratives online that remind you of the conversations that he has with the psychiatrist/survivor in the selection?

• The Cybrary of the Holocaust
• The United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum
• L'Chaim Holocaust Web Project

Scholars and activists often use the words or significantly do not use the words holocaust and genocide to refer to times and places different from WWII and Nazi Germany and in reference to a variety of ethnic groups or communities. Investigate one or more of the following sites and consider the definitions of holocaust and genocide. How does the site for the National Museum of the American Indian differ, for example, from the site for the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum? In contrast, what kind of terminology does the Native American Holocaust Museum site use? You will learn from some sites that the term genocide was coined only in 1944. Is it anachronistic to use it in reference to earlier historical events? When was the term holocaust first used? Additionally, think about parallels between these sites and Spiegelman's work. Do other artists use the comic book form as well? Do they use personal narratives by survivors as well?

• Genocide in Twentieth Century Far East Asia
• Genocidal Acts During the Twentieth Century
• The Crime of Genocide
• Genocide Websites: The Threat Continues
• Reviews of Joe Sacco's Palestine (Fantagraphics Books and Bugpowder)
• National Museum of the American Indian
• The Native American Embassy and the Native American Holocaust Museum
• The Chair: Holocaust Memorial to Disabled People

Web Connections for Chapter 3

The readings in this chapter build on the themes of identity, difference, and community explored in Chapters 1 and 2 and therefore also work well with the "Identity in Cyberspace" and "The Web and a Sense of Place and Community." In addition to the pieces for which we have provided electronic fieldwork, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Frantz Fanon's "The Fact of Blackness," and Andrea Lowenstein's "Confronting Stereotypes: Teaching MAUS in Crown Heights" are good springboards for these broad themes. This chapter also initiates themes that later chapters will deepen and complicate: graphic and hypertext stories, democratic activism, and globalization. As such they relate well to "The Shape of Stories" and "Democracy, Difference, and Globalization" as well. Readings such as Tim O'Brien's "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong" and Mary Louise Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone" begin discussions that lead to these Web research activities.

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