Pratt And Tompkins Through Historical Text example essay topic

Historical Truth As a child sits through history class in the first grade, he or she learns of the relationship between Christopher Columbus and the Indians. This history lesson tells the children of the dependence each group had on each other. But as the children mature, the relations between the two groups began to change with their age. So the story that the teenagers are told is a gruesome one of savage killings and lying. When the teenagers learn of this, they themselves might want to do research on this subject to find out the truth.

But as one searches, one finds the inconsistency between the research books. So the question is, who is telling the truth Mary Louise Pratt and Jane Tompkins probe these difficulties of the reading and writing of history, specifically at the problems of bias and contemplative historical accounts. In "Art of the Contact Zone", Pratt explores the issue of whose version of history gets favored and whose gets limited by analyzing the circumstances surrounding Guam an Poma's and de la Vega's letter to the King of Spain. In " 'Indians': Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History", Tompkins investigates how history is shaped in accordance to personal biases and cultural conditions of historians by questioning different writings about Native Americans. Each author comes to the conclusion between history and subjectivity, meaning that history is problematic. The historical accounts pondered by Pratt and Tompkins through historical text allows them to realize that every account that a historian calls a fact is really a perspective.

Pratt's concepts of "contact zone,"autoethnography", and "ethnography" are supported by the historical ideas in Tompkins essay. The concepts "contact zone,"autoethnography, and "ethnography" are used by Pratt to support ideas in her essay about history. A "contact zone", according to Pratt, is where two cultures "meet, clash, and grapple with each other" (625). "Ethnography" is a story where the superior writes about the inferior, while "autoethnography" is the opposite, telling a story by the inferior about the superior. As the cultures clash, the winner gets to tell the story.

The winner is usually the one who has the superior power. Pratt brings up this idea while she discusses two authors: de la Vega and Poma. De la Vega's "ethnographic text" illustrates the relationship between the Incas and the Spanish during the conquering of the Inca's land. On the other hand, Poma's "autoethnographic text" on this historical account contains conflicting ideas. But both of these essays are sent to the king of Spain. Which essay is read by the king For one, it is not Poma's essay since it is [s] uch a text is heterogeneous on the reception end as well as the production end: it will read very differently to people in different positions in the contact zone... it deploys systems of meaning making, the letter necessarily means differently to bilingual Spanish-Quechua speakers and to monolingual speakers in either language (536) With such a language barrier between who Poma is trying to make contact with, the Spanish King, allows his letter to be lost.

But de la Vega, who is a son of a Spanish official, writes his letter to the King of Spain. De la Vega also spoke Quechua, but " his book is written in eloquent, standard Spanish, without illustrations" (536). This allows the Spanish people, the main target for his essay, to read and understand the history. So the victor, de la Vega, gets to tell his story about the Incas and the clashing since he is the superior culture. Not only does Pratt write about such types of texts and "contact zones", so does Tompkins. Tompkins essay also deals with the various writings of historical accounts.

The "contact zone" she studies is that of the Puritans and Indians. Every text that Tompkins reads tells a different story about the conflicts between the two groups. One author, Miller, does not pay attention to the presence of the Indians. Tompkins assumes this because Miller states that what amazed him most was the 'massive narrative of the movement of European culture into the vacant wilderness of America' (620).

How can the wilderness of America be vacant when the Indians inhabit this area On the other hand, the view of Jennings is that the Puritans are cruel, while the Indians are superior to them, the Puritans. So this "contact zone" between the Puritans and the Indians is viewed differently by each author. Unlike Pratt who reads both an "autoethnographic text" and an "ethnographic text" to understand the historical relationship better, Tompkins reads only "ethnographic texts". This enables Tompkins to only get one main view, that is of the superior being, the Puritans.

The conclusions Tompkins comes to about facts and perspectives in history apply to Pratt's way at looking at historical texts. According to Tompkins, [t] he statement implied that in order to make a moral judgment about something, you have to know something else first-namely, the facts of the case you " re being call upon to judge. My complaint was that their perspectival nature would disqualify any facts I might encounter and therefore I couldn't judge (631). Tompkins states that to know the full story, one has to know the facts before one can form an opinion. But Tompkins finds out that the differences in the texts that she has read is due to the "perspectival nature" of the authors. So, [t] he seeing of the story as a cause for alarm rather than a droll anecdote or a piece of curious information is evidence of values we already hold, of judgments already made, of facts already perceived as facts (631).

Tompkins is saying that there are no facts, just opinions. So what each historian calls a fact is really a perspective or opinion. Tompkins' position on facts is that they are not completely true due to the opinions of the author. With this information, Pratt would agree with Tompkins view about factual ism and subjectivity in historical accounts. In Pratt's examination of de la Vega's and Poma's essay, she upholds Tompkins' assumption. Poma writes an "autoethnographic text" where the inferior writes about the superior and their conflicts.

So de la Vega's essay is the opposite, an "ethnographic text". Poma, an Incan, does have a form of writing, one that is not common to others, so his essay is filled with pictures and text to describe the accounts of the conquering by the Spanish. With the essay containing pictures, and a mixture of different languages it would be difficult to understand by anyone. On the other hand, de la Vega's essay is written in the native language of Spain where they will understand the topics talked about. Each of the authors, de la Vega and Poma, view their works as the facts. But Pratt is telling us that history is subjective.

As it is seen the superior cultures text was readily available for people to see based on the accessibility to have the text duplicated. Another example is that de la Vega represents the superior culture. So with peoples biases one would conform to the beliefs of the culture that is more like themselves. This is exactly the same reasons why Tompkins did not read any texts written by an Indian, because they were not available for her to read to get an accurate account of the time period since the Indians did not have accessibility to the requirements of writing essays.

Also, the majority of people would not understand the text if it was written. According to these two authors, there seems to be a question of subjectivity in historical accounts. Which from reading both essays one would find this to be true. For example, the historical documents encountered by both authors found some conflicting ideas.

Comparing the two authors strategies to read history, Pratt does a complete job. A complete job means reading primary sources from both the inferior and superior cultures. This way she could get the full picture of the actual accounts of the "contact zone". On the other hand, Tompkins does not read both types of texts, only "ethnographic texts" and comes to her conclusion.

But the basis of Pratt's and Tompkins' essay is of the essays they read. Therefore each author is biased in their own nature. There biases come from their culture, which affects the way one sees or understands, and writes history. So whose view is right It is oneself who ultimately decides on which historical point is true based on ones biases.