Intellectual Property as Self-Ownership

Sor Juana's relentless pursuit of knowledge and her defense of women's intellectual authority embody a radical claim: that the mind's output belongs fundamentally to the self. In libertarian justice, intellectual property emerges not from state grant but from the natural right to one's own labor and thought. Sor Juana wrote, studied, and created despite institutional resistance—asserting that her ideas, her arguments, her verses were hers to produce and control. This concept reframes IP not as monopoly privilege but as an extension of bodily autonomy: you own your thoughts because you own yourself. Applied today, this challenges both corporate IP regimes and state censorship, positioning freedom of intellectual creation as inseparable from freedom itself. The self-owning individual has the primary claim to the fruits of her mind.