ABSTRACT
In 1691, New Spain’s famed nun and writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz offered the beautiful Biblical Queen Esther as a female exemplar because of her “gift of […] persuasion” (La respuesta 77). Sor Juana was one of colonial Mexico’s most prolific writers-a poet, composer of state ceremony, intellectual, and philosopher. In the larger project of which this chapter is a part, I illuminate the place of Sor Juana in the history and theory of rhetoric, using feminist rhetorical methodology to “extrapolate” Sor Juana’s rhetorical theory from her seemingly nonrhetoric statements and activities (Ratcliffe 4). In that project, I argue that the text from which the allusion to Esther is drawn, Sor Juana’s semi-autobiographical, exegetical, and proto-feminist manifesto, La respuesta, provides a theory of the rhetoric of silence. La respuesta is this nun’s passionate defense of women’s intellectual capacity and rights in response to a bishop who is trying to silence her scholarly activity and writing. Embroiled in a political battle with this bishop over issues of literacy, Sor Juana emerges as someone profoundly concerned with the acquisition, use, and effects of language in real-life contexts, especially contexts involving women and other nondominant speakers. She ultimately submitted to ecclesiastic authorities, but only after announcing her own impending silence and gesturing toward the rhetorical significance of this impending silence. Thus, following Krista Ratcliffe and Cheryl Glenn, this essay will use feminist historiography to contribute toward the ever-expanding “re-gendering” of rhetorical history (Glenn 2).
