ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 will offer an overview of the methodological guidelines set up for the new field of research suggested in this book, Feminist Translator Studies. A series of connections will be drawn between Barbara Godard’s own experience, articulating the community from which feminist translation studies would later emerge, and such methodological guidelines, weighting on their effectiveness and their implications for building community both within and outside academia. Reflecting on Godard’s agency, and therefore on the history of our own discipline, is part of the self-reflexive attitude that, I believe, we should adopt for feminist translator studies, and feminist praxis in general. It is through a constant encouragement of self-criticism that we may ‘unchart’ the future of feminist translator studies, contrary to what is often considered as necessary for the prospective advance of mainstream disciplines. It is precisely against patriarchal borders, be they geographical or metaphoric, that I would wish to react here. In the means of encouraging more intersectional research practices, we need to accept the premise that research methodologies must be constantly updated and reconfigured to adapt to the ever-evolving, intersectional realities in which translators intervene daily. Feminisms, thus, must be an enabler of dialogue in difference, a point of departure for acquiring new insights and exploring the reality of subjects, which as Barbara Godard once put it (1989), are eternally in process. Such is the un-charted, and therefore exciting nature of the research to be conducted in the years to come.
