Gender as Method: Feminist Thought, Visual Culture, and Quiet Revolution

Art, Resistance & Radical Method Tide
Written By Guest User

What does it mean to treat gender not simply as identity, but as method, as analysis, and as a way of reconstructing knowledge?

In this reasoning, Professor Patricia Mohammed reflects on the making of Caribbean feminist thought across classrooms, kitchens, activist movements, archives, and visual culture. Mohammed reflects on her intellectual formation in Trinidad and Tobago during the 1970s, the influence of the Black Power movement, Marxist organising, women’s movements, and feminist writing, and the personal experiences that made gender an urgent scholarly and political question.

Together, we discuss the long struggle to establish gender studies within the academy, the difference between accepting gender equality and merely managing it, and the continued resistance to gender as a serious analytical framework. The conversation also turns to visual culture, with Mohammed reflecting on image, memory, ethics, and the possibilities of visual work for Caribbean epistemology.

This episode is a thoughtful and far-reaching reflection on the institutional histories of Caribbean feminism, the reconstruction of knowledge, and gender as a quiet revolution still unfolding.

What this Episode Offers

  • A grounded history of Caribbean feminist thought emerging from activism, scholarship, and everyday life

  • Insight into how gender became both a scholarly and political question in the Caribbean context

  • A clear explanation of gender as an analytical tool, not just personal experience

  • A critical look at why gender studies still struggles for legitimacy within the academy

  • A distinction between the acceptance of gender equality and the ongoing management of it

  • An exploration of gender as a process of reconstructing knowledge across disciplines

  • Reflection on the role of visual culture, image, and memory in shaping understanding

  • A discussion of fear, resistance, and misunderstanding in conversations about gender

  • Insight into the relationship between gender, power, and institutional change

  • A framing of gender as a “quiet revolution” that unfolds across generations

References

Daly, S. (1982). The developing legal status of women in Trinidad and Tobago. National Commission on the Status of Women.

Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. W. W. Norton.

Greer, G. (1970). The female eunuch. MacGibbon & Kee.

Le Roy Ladurie, E. (1978). Montaillou: The promised land of error (B. Bray, Trans.). Scolar Press. (Original work published 1975)

Massiah, J. (Ed.). (1982). Women and education (Women in the Caribbean Project, Vol. 5). University of the West Indies.

Massiah, J. (Ed.). (1993). Women in developing economies: Making visible the invisible. Berg Publishers in association with UNESCO.

Massiah, J., Leo-Rhynie, E., & Bailey, B. (2016). The UWI gender journey: Recollections and reflections. University of the West Indies Press. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=30678534

Mitchell, J. (1971). Woman's estate. Pantheon Books.

Mohammed, P. (2007). Imaging the Caribbean: Culture and visual translation. Macmillan Caribbean.

Mohammed, P. (2009). Coolie pink and green [Experimental documentary short film]. Produced and directed by Patricia Mohammed.

Pamuk, O. (2009). The museum of innocence (M. Freely, Trans.). Faber and Faber. (Original work published 2008)

Rowbotham, S. (1973). Woman's consciousness, man's world. Penguin.

Slocum, S. (1975). Woman the gatherer: Male bias in anthropology. In R. R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an anthropology of women (pp. 36–50). Monthly Review Press.

Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). A vindication of the rights of woman. J. Johnson.

Woolf, V. (1929). A room of one's own. Hogarth Press.

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