Knowledge and Power
In Mary Louise Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone", she discusses the association of a less powerful civilization, the Andean's, and a powerful, dominant civilization, the Spanish. The Spaniards' lack of knowledge of the Andean civilization prevented them from realizing their true culture and made them assume that the Andean's were an ignorant people. Poma's learning of the Spanish culture enabled him to act as a messenger between the two civilizations and thus gain more power in relating information between them. The Spanish had much power, but they did not know much about the Andean's, whereas Poma knew more about both cultures. In a sense, Poma had more power from his knowledge than the Spanish had knowledge from their dominant power. Therefore, knowledge is power, but knowledge does not always come with power. Guaman Poma's letter to King Philip III shows that even though the Andeans were not as powerful as the Spanish, they were still able to develop the knowledge to communicate with people from another culture or who speak a different language. Without the ability to communicate, we feel we are lost and alone. The Spanish had no interest in learning the language of the Andeans; therefore, Poma was forced to learn Spa
The people or things we learn from either keep us ignorant or actually teach us and let us gain some power through what we learn. Everything we learn is presented to us in an educational package. Unfortunately, "A student who has the desire to get at a dogfish or a Shakespeare sonnet may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the educational package in which it is presented." (Percy 519) What we learn depends on the media in which the information is transmitted to us. The educators are the ones that choose what and how we are going to learn something. The educators are the ones who hold all of the power in this case. The students are the ones who are struggling to gain power through knowledge. Without this knowledge, we are nothing. The ignorant, or presumed ignorant are the people we enslave or take advantage of. The King did not even see the Andeans for himself. Instead he sent a few men to look at the place and find out about the Andeans for him. When this information is given to the King, it is what the men saw and not what the King himself has seen. The relaying of information forms a symbolic complex for the King. Though he may have been a good King or not, he still has a preconceived notion of what the Andeans are like. Do to the lack of power the Andeans hold, it is not worth the time for the King to find out what these people are really like. Since the King is the one with the power, he chooses not to know about them. Usually, when the enslaved peopl
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Approximate Word count = 1023
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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