The Name as Contested Territory

Sor Juana lived within Spanish colonial frameworks that shaped how women, Indigenous peoples, and mixed-race individuals could name themselves, yet she claimed intellectual authority within these constraints. Her tradition illuminates how names themselves are colonial territories—imposed, regulated, and claimed. Across cultures, the struggle over naming reflects deeper conflicts: colonized peoples reclaiming indigenous names, enslaved peoples choosing new names, women rejecting patrilineal naming conventions, and diaspora communities negotiating multiple name systems. This concept examines how identity formation occurs in conversation with, resistance to, and transformation of these contested spaces. By recognizing names as territories of power, we move beyond treating identity as individual preference to understanding it as a site where justice, history, and self-determination meet. The right to name—oneself, one's community, one's knowledge—becomes inseparable from decolonization and freedom.