The Authority to Question

Sor Juana asserted her right to intellectual authority in a system designed to deny it to her. She questioned received wisdom, challenged official narratives, and insisted on her capacity for rigorous thought. This concept applies that authority-claiming to ethical consumption: consumers must assert their right to question corporate claims about sustainability, ethics, and justice. Companies spend billions constructing narratives about their responsibility while obscuring extractive practices. Ethical consumption requires intellectual courage to doubt these narratives, to demand evidence, to recognize marketing as rhetorical construction rather than truth. This means not accepting corporate 'sustainability' reports uncritically, demanding independent verification, and understanding greenwashing as a form of deception. Sor Juana's legacy insists that ordinary people possess the intellectual capacity and moral authority to interrogate power structures and demand accountability. Ethical consumers must claim this same authority: to ask hard questions, to require transparency, to refuse easy narratives. This intellectual assertiveness is necessary precisely because those with power prefer our passive acceptance of their versions of reality.