Spatialities of the Otherwise: cities, lands, and territories vaster than empires in feminist political utopias

This paper explores the intersections between feminist utopian writing and feminist political philosophy, foregrounding space as a constitutive dimension of feminist possibility. Drawing on relational ontologies, it argues that space is not a neutral material given, but a product of power, narrative, and imagination that both enables and constrains self-determination and intersubjective relations. Moving beyond the dualistic modern subject, the paper traces how feminist thought reframes otherness as interdependence and liminality-a vision embodied by Le Guin's character Osden in 'Vaster than Empires and More Slow. ' Through a comparative reading of four literary works-Christine de Pizan's La Cité des Dames, Gilman's Herland, and Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed-the paper examines how feminist utopias rewrite political and spatial concepts such as map, border, nation, and empire, producing porous, ambiguous, and relational spaces.