The Right to Intellectual Authorship

Sor Juana's life exemplified the struggle for intellectual recognition in a patriarchal colonial system that denied women authorship and authority. She fought for the right to be named as the originator of her ideas, challenging structures that erased women's intellectual contributions. This concept extends across cultures where naming practices, colonial legacies, and gender systems obscure who receives credit for knowledge creation. The right to intellectual authorship means ensuring that individuals can claim their ideas, be properly attributed, and have their cultural knowledge recognized without appropriation or erasure. In our globalized world, this principle protects against the systematic theft of indigenous knowledge, women's innovations, and voices from marginalized communities who create but are rarely named.