Direction: Utopian View of my community is in ITALIC. Contact Zone View of my
Community is in bold.
Varsity Tennis Team that I’ve participated can be view either as utopian
“imagined community” or as a contact zone within a social space. Utopian is a modern
nation that people share on the common ground. For example, people can have equal
right and equal voice in a community. It can be assume as an “imagined community”, in
other words, a perfect community where it is a homogenous zone that all people are
relatively equal. Contact zone is another term that I define my own community.
Contact zone is a zone or a meeting place where two groups or two asymmetrical
power clashes together. Pratt views a community as a contact zone and not a
utopian zone, because she sense that a community doesn’t always stay equal. Thus
there’s unequal or unbalance situation between two class or status distinction.
Utopian community as Benedict Anderson said, “Now obviously this style of
imagining of modern nations, as Anderson describes it, is strongly utopian, embodying
values like equality, fraternity, liberty, which the societies often profess but
systematically fail to realize.” (Pratt 507). Anderson’s point of view about the utopian
social space is an “imagined community” that can be view as perfect community. In my
social space; Varsity Tennis Team the utopian views in my community is that members of
the tennis team are all seeking for extracurricular activity to do outside of school. The
other point is that we all want to represent our school to play against other high schools;
we all share a common hobby.
Contact zone in other case is a deeper in depth analysis on my social space than a
utopian community that is expressing a more general sense in my social space. In other
words, it is not only the goals that members share to create the purpose of the tennis
team. Contact zone as Pratt points out focuses on the two power relations that clash
together within a social space. “ I use this term to refer to social spaces where cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical
relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out
in many parts of the world today” (Pratt 501). In that case, Varsity Tennis Team can
truly define what Pratt meant as a social space that is view as a contact zone.
Contact zone in my tennis team is portraying as dominants taking over the
subordinates. Contact zone perspective is point of view that my coach a dominant
power tells the subordinate members that each member will take turn in playing
tennis match against other school. But she fails to acknowledge that she is actually
contradicting her point. First she said that every player has equal chances to play in
a match. However, I joined the tennis team for three years, in my senior year she
doesn’t even put me into one match and she label me as a status of substitute. It is
clearly that single and double players don’t take turn to play in the matches.
However, in reality, she should equally assign player to play equal matches. The reason
why that our tennis team doesn’t win is because of the coach’s stubborn idea and there’s
no subordinate player fighting for their own right to take turn on the match. I think that
the coach should definitely give opportunity for other tennis player. So the idea is that
even though I joined the tennis team for a long period of time but I have still been treated
as a subordinate. So this idea should change through transculturation and we can
make dreams come true by taking turns to play in the match.
I’ve faced turmoil and devotion to change my own rights by staying late after the
actual members have competed and observed every match. I’ve even devoted my time to
practice my tennis skill as well as hinting the coach that I have the opportunity to go out
there and compete in a match. The reason I am doing this is because once I graduated
from high school I want to tell the new members that we should fight for our own right:
for equal chances to take turn in playing in matches and show the coach that we can be
competitive. As I’ve experience this hardship on proving myself right, I felt that in this
contact zone as Pratt is expressing is somehow related to Social Darwinism that the
subordinate is competing to prove that one group can be the dominant group.
Pratt’s contact zone actually let me acknowledge about the changes that we
can make in this society. If a community is utopian then there wouldn’t be any change.
Change is always fair and it can be related to my experience in my social space. Not
only am I expressing my own rights but I am influencing the other subordinate group to
step up for petitioning under this unfair act within my social group and any unfair
practice should be ban.