Reclaiming Care as Intellectual Labor

Sor Juana lived in a convent where she performed domestic and pastoral care while producing her most significant intellectual work. She refused the false binary between caring for others and thinking deeply, recognizing that her letters, mentorship, and emotional labor were inseparable from her philosophical production. This challenges dominant hierarchies that separate 'real' intellectual work from care, emotion, and relationality. In intersectional practice, this concept is crucial because care work disproportionately falls on women, people of color, and other marginalized groups—often rendered invisible. By reclaiming care as intellectual labor, we validate the knowledge embedded in parenting, healing, community-building, and emotional attunement. This framework refuses the devaluation of traditionally feminine knowledge and insists that intersectional analysis must include appreciation for relational and care-based epistemologies as equally rigorous and necessary as abstract theoretical work.