Epistemic Justice and Credibility Gaps

Sor Juana's writings on theology and science were often dismissed, undervalued, or attributed to male confessors—a classic epistemic injustice. Her lived experience and rigorous thought carried less weight than male colleagues' casual assertions. This pattern repeats across intersectional contexts: Black scholars' work is questioned more rigorously, women's ideas are attributed to men, disabled people's self-knowledge about their conditions is overridden by medical authority. Epistemic justice requires naming these gaps and actively restoring credibility. In practice, this means: citing marginalized scholars, believing people about their own experiences, creating intellectual spaces where multiply-marginalized voices are presumed competent rather than suspect, and examining whose knowledge gets valued as 'objective.' Sor Juana's example illuminates how fighting for recognition of one's intellectual authority is itself intersectional justice work—it challenges systems determining who counts as a knower.