The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
Lecture
Expanding the canon: the philosophy of Juana Inés de la Cruz. Lecture by Chiara Bottici
An event accompanying The Woman Question 1550-2025 exhibition
LOCATION
Auditorium
LANGUAGE
English
ADMISSION
Free thanks to the cooperation with Audi Polska
Miguel Cabrera, Portrait of Juana Inés de la Cruz, 1750
The exclusion of women from the canon is not limited solely to art history—a similar phenomenon also affects the history of philosophy. Just as we are rediscovering the lives and works of forgotten female artists today, researchers around the world are restoring the memory of previously overlooked women philosophers, along with their writings and ideas. At the same time, this research leads to asking fundamental questions: how did the canon come to be, what is it, and who and what purpose does it serve? Chiara Bottici, author of one of the texts included in the exhibition catalog for The Woman Question 1550–2025, will present a lecture dedicated to this very issue, focusing on the figure of Juana Inés de la Cruz—a seventeenth-century thinker, writer, and poet.
The talk examines the philosophical significance of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and reflects on the mechanisms that led to her exclusion from the traditional philosophical canon. Rather than simply recovering Sor Juana as an overlooked thinker, Chiara Bottici argues that it is necessary to critically analyze how the canon itself has been constructed through institutional, cultural, and social forces shaped by sexism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Using an intersectional approach, the talk situates Sor Juana’s work within broader efforts to expand and transform philosophical discourse. It advocates not only for the inclusion of marginalized voices—particularly women and non-European thinkers—but also for a rethinking of the criteria that define what counts as philosophy and who is recognized as a philosopher.