Intersectional Injustice and Multiple Subordinations

Sor Juana's position as a woman, a person of mixed racial ancestry in colonial Mexico, a servant to the Church, and an intellectual all positioned her within intersecting hierarchies of power. Her civil disobedience was necessarily complex because her subjection was multifaceted. This concept, rooted in her lived experience, anticipates modern intersectional analysis and applies across traditions by recognizing that resistance cannot address only one axis of injustice. Those resisting institutional control must understand how oppression operates through multiple, reinforcing systems. Sor Juana's strategies—her literary sophistication, her theological learning, her negotiations with patrons—reflect someone navigating and subtly subverting several systems simultaneously. Civil disobedience that ignores intersectionality risks advancing some while abandoning others.