Epistemic Justice and Authority Recovery

Sor Juana fought against epistemic injustice—the systematic denial of her credibility as a knower and thinker. She asserted her right to interpret scripture, philosophy, and natural phenomena when authorities insisted women lacked the capacity. Epistemic justice in intersectional practice means recognizing how marginalized people are structurally prevented from being heard and believed. It requires actively restoring authority to those whose knowledge has been erased or stolen. Practitioners engage in epistemic justice by: centering the interpretations of those most affected by injustice, validating knowledge produced outside academic institutions, supporting marginalized scholars, and examining who gets quoted and cited. It means treating someone's lived experience as legitimate data, their analysis as expertise, their voice as necessary. This reverses centuries of being positioned as objects of study rather than knowers of truth about their own lives.