Resistance to Systems of Classification

Sor Juana questioned the rigid categories—gender, class, race—that her society used to exclude her from intellectual life. These classifications weren't neutral descriptions but justifications for hierarchy. Similarly, the biological classification that places humans at the apex and animals below serves to justify exploitation. Sor Juana's career demonstrates that beings defying expected categories possess intellectual and moral significance regardless of their placement in established systems. Applied to animals, this means recognizing that our taxonomic ordering of species—as wild/domestic, useful/useless, intelligent/instinctual—reflects human interests, not objective moral truth. The concept calls for resistance to accepting classification schemes uncritically. By questioning the systems that categorize both women and animals as inferior, Sor Juana's tradition suggests that moral consideration should transcend conventional hierarchies and instead respond to actual capacities for suffering and flourishing.