Abstract
Throughout history, the voices of marginalized individuals have been silenced, and their intellectual contributions negated. For centuries, Mexican women and Chicana feminists have worked relentlessly to break this silence and reclaim their voices within hegemony. Renaissance Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz was a woman who broke the silence and created discursive space through a rhetoric of difference. Through the practices of naming, narratives, and replacing silence with voice Sor Juana rejected the external for the internal and contributed to self and group-created discourse. She departed from traditional writing and created her own discursive space within the convent and the patriarchal society of her time. As part of an effort to recover voices that have been silenced or negated, this thesis aims to trace Sor Juana’s discursive practices in the works of Mexicanas and Chicana feminist scholars. Tracing Sor Juana’s discursive practices will shed light on how these women departed from tradition and created a unique space within a patriarchal society.