The Right to Intellectual Self-Making

Sor Juana fought fiercely for her right to think, write, and define herself on her own terms despite institutional constraints and gender expectations. This concept establishes that identity is not something assigned by poverty or circumstance but something each person has the right to actively create through intellectual engagement. In contexts of poverty, this right becomes particularly radical: it claims that a person experiencing material deprivation maintains full authority over their intellectual development, beliefs, and self-conception. The framework challenges systems that attempt to reduce poor people to their economic status, insisting instead on the inalienable right to intellectual autonomy. Applying this means advocating for access to education, books, and thinking spaces as fundamental rights, not privileges, and recognizing that self-directed intellectual growth is an essential component of human dignity and identity formation.