ABSTRACT
The aim of this book’s first two parts has been to properly ground and make a case for Barbara Godard’s foundational role in the emergence of a specific, female-centred thought community, consolidating an influx of transversal solidarities between Anglophone-Canadian and Québécois feminisms. Such a community has been referred to as ‘Canadian feminist translation studies’. Perhaps accurately, this denomination reflects the constant tensions between the original goal of this group, building the first ever transnational bridge between feminisms through translation, and constant attempts on the part of different mainstream forces at assimilating it for other purposes, especially as argued throughout this book, the consolidation of a solid Canadian nation. In this chapter, as a sort of conclusion to the sociocritical research produced so far, I would like to offer an epilogue to the (hi)story told here. A portrait of the divergence and decline in which, following Herman’s terminology in his description of invisible colleges (2011), marked the Canadian cultural landscape in the end of the 20th century. Only under this light, I believe, can we properly assess the impact of Barbara Godard’s work in Canada’s current sociocultural picture, as well as her transcendence in its narrative tissue. This task implies addressing one of the key questions interspersed in the previous chapters. What are the (im-)possibilities of the woman/nation binomial? For Barbara, the feminine, understood as ‘a site of contradiction’, shifts constantly between a forceful incorporation to the national set of values and a profound incompatibility, a ‘question[ing of] the nation as totality’ (2021: 16). The afterlife of her legacy illustrates this dilemma.
