How may we imagine the new world differently that that constructed
through the western discourses of enlightenment and progress
from the fifteenth century onwards. How may we perceive the
discovery, colonization and cultural development of peoples
of the Caribbean region. The film, the first in a series,
sets up the parameters by which might begin to view the “Other”
and deconstruct the binaries which have underpinned western
thought.
I came to this project through the study of gender because
it allowed me the voice to speak, to move from the personal
to the political, from the specific to the general,
to break disciplinary boundaries, to disrupt the knowledges
that we have inherited. The study of gender has been
perceived primarily as a litany of woes about man-woman
relations and the battle of the sexes. The film attempts
to dispel popular perceptions that this is the totality
of gender scholarship and activism. Gender offers a
new way of seeing, not only how stereotypes are constructed
and perpetuated, but reminding us that there are different
sources of data that we might make use of and different
legacies that people bring to their society’s
development, despite and because of their particular
gendered, ethnic and class experiences.
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