GVSU Philosophy Department Colloquium Series: Reason and Resistance in Sor Juana with Areins Pelayo


Friday, February 14, 2025
3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Allendale Campus
Faculty, Staff, Students


Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) was a novohispanic nun who composed several poems, plays, and essays. Though still relatively unknown, there is increasing philosophical attention to her work and its contribution and relevance to feminism, early modern thought, and colonialism. Professor Pelayo will argue that Sor Juana deployed her own theory of reasoning as a tool of epistemic resistance against oppressors. She will provide an interpretation of what reasoning was for Sor Juana—a genderless ability because at minimum, for her, reasoning was a process of abstraction and compounding. She will then also explain how, for Sor Juana, these two processes together with imagination and sensation (faculties of the “vegetative” and “sensitive” parts of the human soul), result in more complex reasoning, such as analogical and non-deductive inferences.  Sor Juana used this theory of reasoning as way to contend against and thus resist sexist and colonialist beliefs toward women and indigenous peoples.


Location Information


MAK B-1-138

Download parking map for the Allendale Campus


Contact Information


clas@gvsu.edu


Hosting Department, Organization, or Business


Philosophy Department, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Tags

academic clas colloquia philosophy


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This event was added to the calendar by Kristen Krueger-Corrado (kruegekr@gvsu.edu) on Monday, January 27, 2025 and was last updated on Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at 8:28 a.m.