The Right to Self-Definition

Throughout her life, Sor Juana resisted being reduced to roles others assigned—ornament, nun, entertainer, muse. Economic systems frequently define people's value by narrow market categories: their productivity, their demographic data, their consumability. Economic justice requires the right to self-definition—to understand oneself beyond market metrics and others' commercial interests. This means resisting how capitalism flattens identity into consumer profiles, how patriarchy confines women to reproductive and domestic roles, how racism assigns people predetermined economic niches. Sor Juana insisted on defining herself as scholar, scientist, philosopher, defender of women's intellectual rights. This right to self-definition is not luxury; it is foundational to dignified economic participation. When people internalize externally imposed definitions of their worth, they accept diminished economic claims. Economic justice requires protecting spaces where people define themselves authentically, discovering capacities that markets did not anticipate and that generate forms of value beyond commercial measure.