Compulsory Obedience as Property Theft

When Church authorities demanded Sor Juana's obedience—requiring her to abandon scholarship, renounce her writings, submit her judgment to institutional doctrine—they were executing a form of property theft. This concept treats compulsory obedience as expropriation of time and will. Libertarian justice recognizes that coerced compliance strips individuals of ownership over their own labor and agency. Sor Juana's resistance to hierarchical obedience articulates how institutional authority operates as a system of appropriation: it claims the right to command, which is only possible if it has first claimed ownership of the person being commanded. Her letters refusing submission assert that legitimate freedom requires the capacity to govern oneself according to one's own judgment. This concept exposes obedience-based systems—whether feudal, ecclesiastical, or bureaucratic—as fundamentally extractive, claiming value from individuals without compensation or consent.