Strategic Complicity and Subversion

Sor Juana operated within the convent system—technically a constraint—while using its protections to pursue unprecedented intellectual work. This concept addresses the reality that those experiencing structural disadvantage cannot simply reject all systems; instead, they must strategically navigate them. Strategic complicity means appearing to accept certain constraints while simultaneously creating spaces of autonomy and subversion within them. For working-class individuals and marginalized communities, this might involve using institutional channels—education, bureaucracy, religious structures—ostensibly as designed while redirecting them toward liberation. This framework acknowledges the complexity of survival under oppression: that tactical cooperation with limiting systems can coexist with intellectual and spiritual resistance. It validates the pragmatism necessary for those without institutional power.