Transnational Portuguese Women Artists

This special issue revisits Portuguese women’s experiences of cultural encounters across national borders. The articles address women’s contribution to ‘Portuguese’ culture, in order to interrogate through a transcultural perspective the conditions that mediate the development of these women's creativity and thought, their reception and impact. The intellectuals discussed in this volume have either lived abroad for extended periods of time, or have multiple national roots and alliances, prompting them to problematize (national) identity and cultural difference and to replace these certainties with hybridism and/or fragmentation. They are cultural agents who have written across cultures, often developing productive discussions across national boundaries. Through their written and public work they have also been able to promote translocal relations and an ethical relation to otherness, disrupting fixed notions of subjective and national identity.