Epistemic Justice and Corruption Prevention

Sor Juana confronted epistemic injustice directly—her knowledge was dismissed because of her gender and her challenge to established doctrine. Corruption depends partly on epistemic injustice: the testimony of marginalized people is disbelieved, indigenous knowledge is dismissed as primitive, women's accounts are labeled emotional rather than factual, poor communities' experiences are ignored. When corruption victims or witnesses belong to groups whose testimony is systematically devalued, their evidence goes ignored. Fighting corruption requires recognizing epistemic injustice and amplifying voices that systems have trained us to dismiss. This means creating institutional spaces where marginalized people's knowledge counts—where domestic workers can testify about labor exploitation, where indigenous communities can report environmental crimes, where women can report sexual corruption without credibility being automatically questioned. Sor Juana's insistence on being heard and taken seriously models this epistemic resistance. Anti-corruption work must include deliberate correction of whose knowledge gets believed and acted upon.