Mestizaje as Epistemological Framework

While Sor Juana lived before the term mestizaje became theorized, her work embodies its epistemological possibility: a way of knowing that draws from multiple traditions without erasing their distinctiveness or claiming false purity. Mestizaje, often reduced to racial mixture, is better understood as a cognitive and cultural practice—a refusal of either/or thinking in favor of both/and complexity. Postcolonial Latin American societies are inevitably mestizo, yet colonial hierarchies positioned mestizaje as inferior to European purity. Contemporary decolonial thinkers like Walter Mignolo and María Lugones reclaim mestizaje as a sophisticated epistemology capable of holding contradictions and generating insights invisible from any single tradition. Sor Juana's syncretic approach—using European theological forms to address Mexican colonial realities, invoking classical authorities while engaging indigenous contexts—demonstrates mestizo thinking. For postcolonial identity, embracing mestizaje means rejecting the colonial demand to choose a single, authentic tradition; instead, it authorizes the development of hybrid intellectual frameworks that reflect the actual complexity of colonized peoples' lived reality and creative possibility.