Women Reclaiming Landscapes. Space and Affect in Short Stories about the South

Abstract

Historically, travel narratives served colonial expansion by feminizing and exploiting territories. This paper explores the interaction between landscape and affect in "Sur" (1982), by Ursula K. Le Guin, and "Camino al sur" (2000), by Angélica Gorodischer. The objective is to analyze how female protagonists reclaim landscapes through practices deviating from patriarchal systems of knowledge and economy. The theoretical framework integrates Marc Angenot’s concept of Social Discourse with Affect Theory and Critical Feminist Geography. By means of a literary comparative approach, the study examines the stories as "co-intelligible antagonisms" that challenge the boundaries of the "thinkable". The results indicate that the protagonists enact strategic resistance through cooperation, desire, and an ethics of care. By prioritizing domesticity and symmetrical relationships, the stories dismantle the traditional opposition between public and private spheres. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that these stories propose sustainable, alternative modes of interconnected existence, debunking heroic masculinist accounts of exploration.