Submitted by:  Maria Julia Rossi, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Modern Languages and Literature, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

“In ‘Las tretas del débil,’ Josefina Ludmer analyzes the strategies that the Mexican poet and scholar Juana Ramírez de Asbaje—better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or simply Sor Juana—used in order to make her voice as a woman to be heard in the seventeenth century. Writing in the nineteen eighties, Ludmer presented this work during an Encuentro Latinoamericano de Escritoras in 1982, and was later collected in the book La sartén por el mango, edited by Patricia Elena González and Eliana Ortega (1983). This reading is stimulating for us to think how this need to find strategies to make women’s voices heard traverses time and regions. Born in 1651, Sor Juana developed a series of rhetorical resources that helped Ludmer comment on the difficult situation of women writers three centuries later. Produced around thirty-five years ago, I find it problematically contemporary to think about gender issues in Latin America today.”

“En “Las tretas del débil”, Josefina Ludmer analiza las estrategias que la poeta e intelectual mexicana Juana Ramírez de Asbaje—más conocida como Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o simplemente Sor Juana—usó para conseguir que su voz de mujer fuese escuchada en el siglo XVII. Escribiendo en la década de 1980, Ludmer presentó este trabajo durante un Encuentro Latinoamericano de Escritoras en 1982, y más tarde las editoras Patricia Elena González y Eliana Ortega lo recogieron en el libro La sartén por el mango (1983). Esta lectura es estimulante para que pensemos cómo esta necesidad de encontrar estrategias para que las voces de las mujeres sean escuchadas atraviesa el tiempo y las regiones. Nacida en 1651, Sor Juana desarrolló una serie de recursos retóricos que colaboraron para que Ludmer comentara sobre la difícil situación de las mujeres escritoras tres siglos más tarde. Escrito hace alrededor de treinta y cinco años, lo encuentro problemáticamente contemporáneo para pensar asuntos de género en Latinoamérica hoy.”  (Comment by Rossi, 2019)

Click here to read online in Spanish:“Las tretas del débil ” (Tricks of the Weak) by Josefina Ludmer, 1985

In Spanish. English translation of title: “Tricks of the Weak”.  According to critic Josefina Ludmer, women’s discourse incorporates the abstract thinking of science and politics by filtering it through cracks in the familiar language.  This strategy, “the trick of the weak”, allows female discourse to claim a space from which one can practice what is forbidden in others: “Not to say but to know, or saying that one doesn’t know but knowing, or saying the opposite of what one knows.  This trick of the weak, which separates the field of knowing (my law), from the field of saying (the law of the other), combines, as in all tactics of resistance, submission to and acceptance of the place assigned to one by the other”

As the most distinguished poet of New Spain, Sor Juana intensely pursued an intellectual life outside of the constraints of marriage and reproduction, which brought her into direct conflict with the structures of power in her society, and specifically, patriarchal church authorities. Her rebellious insistence upon the right of women to engage in intellectual labor required her to hone what Josefina Ludmer has called the “tricks of the weak,” or subaltern rhetorical strategies for survival.

Article is open access.