1 How to be a Contact Zone: The Missionary Karl Gützlaff between Nationalism, Transnationalism and Transculturalism, 1827–1851 Thoralf Klein In the work of Mary Louise Pratt, the contact zone is defined as a liminal space where cross- cultural interaction takes place. 1 Obviously, this interaction does not imply an equal footing; on the contrary, such processes are governed by inequalities and hierarchies of power. Pratt herself defined the concept rather loosely, which is sometimes seen as an advantage, as it »does not presuppose the existence of any rigid, inflexible cultural boundaries. It enables us to see mingling, interaction, accommodation, hybridisation and confluence as well as conflicts across borders of many kinds.« 2 Still, her understanding of cultural interaction is not unproblematic. Pratt conceives of the contact zone as a constellation enabling the »spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect.« 3 Accordingly, she privileges direct interaction, for example in describing how a course she taught became a contact zone in which members of different ethnic groups shared their backgrounds and perspectives. 4 Importantly, although Pratt mostly analyses travel writings – i.e. texts addressing a metropolitan audience –, she apparently understands them as products of the contact zone rather than as agents of cultural interaction and transformation in their own right. 5 This also implies a distinction between the contact zone, where the original interaction takes place, on the one hand and the writing and, more broadly speaking, communication about this interaction on the other. In other words, the contact zone is a rather narrow concept. As a consequence, the complex and dialectical processes of cultural flows between colonies and metropoles, between an increasingly hegemonic and domineering Europe and North America and the non-»Western« world, tend to be limited to tangible forms of interaction within a clearly demarcated if 1 Mary Louise PRATT, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, London 1992; id., Art of the Contact Zone, in: Profession (1991), pp. 33–40. 2 Monika GÄNSSBAUER, »In China They Eat the Moon«: Western Images of China from the 19th to the 21st Century, in: Asien 121 (2011), pp. 119–129, at p. 126. 3 PRATT, Imperial Eyes, p. 7. 4 Id., Art of the Contact Zone, pp. 39–40. 5 Ibid., p. 36, referring to the First New Chronicle and Good Government by Felipe GUAMAN POMA DE AYALA, a seventeenth-century text, which she analyses in great detail and whose impact she compares with Garcilaso DE LA VEGA’S Royal Commentaries of the Incas.