The Politics of Naming and Self-Definition

Colonial projects inherently involve naming: colonizers rename lands, peoples, and practices, asserting dominance through linguistic control. Sor Juana lived within this system—her very existence as "Sor Juana" reflected her incorporation into Spanish colonial religious and patriarchal structures. Yet she claimed the power of self-definition through her writing: choosing how to present herself, what intellectual traditions to claim, how to name her own experience. This represents a political act foundational to identity in multicultural contexts. When indigenous peoples reclaim traditional names, when diaspora communities resist assimilationist renaming, when communities of color assert self-chosen identifications, they exercise political agency through naming. Political identity requires the power to say "this is who I am" rather than accepting imposed definitions. In multicultural societies, struggles over naming—What are we called? Who gets to decide? What do these names mean?—are explicitly political. Sor Juana's example shows that self-definition is not mere personal preference but a core political right. Communities that control their own naming assert sovereignty over their identity; those forced to accept external names remain politically subordinate, their identities defined by others' interests rather than their own self-understanding.