The Politics of Visibility

Sor Juana's prolific writing—despite convent walls and social restrictions—demonstrates how visibility becomes political. Those experiencing class disadvantage are often rendered invisible: their labor unseen, their voices unheard, their experiences deemed irrelevant to dominant discourse. This concept examines how articulation through writing, testimony, and public intellectual work creates visibility that disrupts systems of erasure. Sor Juana's correspondence, poetry, and theological arguments insisted on her presence and authority in spaces that excluded her by gender and circumstance. For marginalized communities, visibility work challenges the structural mechanisms that depend on invisibility for their functioning. It transforms private suffering into public knowledge, individual struggle into collective narrative.