Embodied Knowledge and Somatic Climate Justice

Sor Juana's work, though intellectual, never forgot the body. She wrote of bodily desire, physical experience, and the embodied stakes of intellectual freedom. She critiqued dualism that separated mind from body, insisting on their integration. Somatic climate justice applies this principle: climate crisis is not abstract but viscerally embodied. Rising heat causes heat stroke and death; air pollution damages lungs; contaminated water causes illness; displacement tears families apart. Those experiencing these impacts possess embodied knowledge—in their bodies, their communities, their sensory memories—that is legitimate climate evidence. Yet climate discourse often remains disembodied: focusing on abstract temperature metrics, carbon numbers, and technological solutions while ignoring how climate breakdown is lived in flesh. Sor Juana's integrated epistemology demands we center embodied knowledge: listening to those whose bodies bear climate impacts, validating somatic experience as evidence, and recognizing that climate justice must address bodily dignity, health, and integrity. Care work, disability justice, and feminist approaches all recognize that climate action must address material bodily needs and vulnerabilities, not just abstract environmental metrics.