Cultural geographies of the contact zone: Gaels, Gallsand overlapping territories in late medieval Ireland

Abstract

In writing about the social and cultural geographies of the past, we frequently reinforce notions of difference by using neatly delineated ethnic terms of reference that often superscribe the complexities of reality on the ground. Referring to 'Gaels' and 'Galls', demarcating 'native' and 'foreign' worlds

The Contact Zone and Dialogical Positionalities in “Non-Normative” Childhoods: How Children Who Language Broker Manage Conflict

“…Translation then, as the index between self–other, is the dialogue that takes place in the “in-between” space—the contact zone (Kim, 2009). Such encounters often emphasize the “strangeness” between “us” and “them” (Banerjee, 2013), foregrounding ambiguities and uncertainties about self and other relationships (Morrissey, 2005).…”

Night as Fragmenting Frontier: Understanding the Night that Remains in an era of 24/7

“…A perhaps softer way of understanding these clashes is through the notion of the ‘contact zone’, in which nocturnal ‘subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other … not in terms of separateness or apartheid, but in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices’ (Pratt , p7). Researchers have argued in particular that ‘contact zone’ speaks well to frontiers away from the space of ‘high colonialism’ (Morrissey ), which nonetheless exhibits features of expansion, conflict and hybridity. Retaining the term of frontier but conceiving it as ‘contact zone’ allows us to retain the insights of the night as frontier metaphor, but provides a potentially more subtle and insightful vision of nocturnal society.…”

The Imperial Present: Geography, Imperialism, and its Continued Effects

“…It has problematized too monolithic accounts of imperialism and ostensibly static and bounded notions such as the 'frontier' as appropriate conceptual tools in theorizing colonial relations and resistance; with many opting for the concept of the 'contact zone' to signal the overlapping nature of 8 T he I mp eria l P re se nt imperialism's intricate human geographies on the ground (Routledge, 1997;Morrissey, 2005;Nally, 2009). Much recent work in historical and cultural geography has also exhibited an interest in the experiences of 'dislocation' for both colonizer and colonized, and this concern has opened an important trajectory of work focused on questions of 'hybridity' and, more specifically, on the hybrid nature of 'colonial subjectivities', as a number of edited volumes attest (Blunt and Rose, 1994;Blunt and McEwan, 2002;Raju et al, 2006).…”