Self-Education as Political Act

Denied formal schooling, Sor Juana taught herself theology, philosophy, mathematics, languages, and literature by accessing her family's library and later the convent's archives. Her self-directed scholarship became an implicit argument: if institutions won't educate women, women will educate themselves and prove their intellectual worth. This transforms learning from passive reception into active resistance. Throughout history, marginalized groups facing educational exclusion—from enslaved people learning to read to working-class autodidacts—asserted fairness through unauthorized knowledge-seeking. Self-education claims personhood and capability against systems designed to deny both. It demonstrates that fairness isn't granted by authorities but claimed through persistent self-development. Periagoge recognizes that when formal systems are corrupt or exclusive, individuals and communities maintaining intellectual life become guardians of justice itself. This concept challenges assumptions that only credentialed knowledge counts, honoring the scholar within everyone.