Intellectual Labor as Unpaid Colonial Extraction

Sor Juana's intellectual contributions were appropriated, minimized, and attributed to men within her lifetime and after. This concept reveals how international law's intellectual property regimes systematize the extraction of knowledge from colonized and marginalized communities. Patent law, copyright frameworks, and trade agreements incorporated into international legal systems allow wealthy nations and corporations to extract traditional knowledge, genetic resources, and intellectual innovations from Global South nations while providing minimal compensation or attribution. International law presents itself as protecting intellectual property universally while actually protecting wealthy nations' interests in controlling knowledge. The doctrine reveals that international law operates as a mechanism of ongoing colonialism, ensuring that knowledge flows from periphery to center, enriching dominant powers while impoverishing knowledge-originating communities. Sor Juana's example demonstrates that intellectual contributions from marginalized positions are systematically undervalued and appropriated. Limiting international law requires recognizing that current intellectual property frameworks constitute theft and redistributing authority over knowledge production to those from whom it has been extracted. True justice requires not universal patents but reparative knowledge sovereignty.