Resistance to Manufactured Consent in Markets

Sor Juana lived in an environment where power structures attempted to constrain thought and enforce compliance through control of information and narrative. Contemporary consumption operates similarly: marketing machinery manufactures consent for unsustainable and exploitative practices by normalizing them, obscuring alternatives, and framing ethical questions as impractical or impossible. This concept calls for the same resistance Sor Juana embodied—refusing the narrative you're offered and thinking critically about whose interests that narrative serves. Manufactured desires presented as needs, aspirational lifestyles sold as attainable, planned obsolescence disguised as innovation—these represent modern attempts to short-circuit the critical thinking necessary for ethical choice. By recognizing consumption as a field of political and ideological struggle, consumers can resist the psychological manipulation designed to keep them compliant. Like Sor Juana's refusal of intellectual censorship, ethical consumption means refusing the manufactured worldview offered by marketing industries and reclaiming the capacity to think independently about what you need, what you value, and what justice demands of your choices.