Epistemic Justice in Accountability

Sor Juana was routinely dismissed as a mere woman claiming intellectual authority in a male-dominated intellectual sphere. Epistemic justice—the fair treatment of people as knowers—is essential to restorative approaches that fail when victims' accounts are doubted or perpetrators' perspectives are granted unearned credibility. This concept recognizes that harm often includes epistemic injustice: the systematic denial of someone's capacity to know and speak truth. In restorative circles informed by Sor Juana's example, all participants must be treated as legitimate knowers whose understanding matters. This means challenging biases about whose knowledge counts, actively soliciting marginalized perspectives, and structuring dialogue so that historical power imbalances don't silence certain voices. Restorative justice becomes truly restorative only when it restores epistemic standing—the recognition that every person harmed or accountable possesses valid knowledge about the harm and its resolution.