ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on fieldwork in Portugal and examines how Women’s, Gender, Feminist Studies (WGFS) scholars based in countries at the periphery of the global academic order engage with the figure of the supposedly more modern academic centre in their local negotiations. It shows how the modern foreign is brought inside Portugal – physically and symbolically – to strengthen the credibility of WGFS claims or initiatives. WGFS scholars invoke the modern foreign as a truth-point not just when presenting their work, but also when attempting to persuade resistant university administrations to grant support to WGFS. The chapter looks at the reverse move: how the projection of Portuguese WGFS scholars outside, into the modern foreign, impacts on the conditions of performativity of their boundary-work within Portugal. The chapter also shows how WGFS is used to symbolise the modernity of the nation and its institutions.
