story. 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 al...
