Epistemic Justice and Knowledge Ownership

Sor Juana faced systematic dismissal of her intellectual authority simply because she was a woman and nun in colonial Mexico. Epistemic justice—the right to be heard as a knower and to have one's ideas credited—directly relates to property and freedom. When institutions deny someone's epistemic standing, they effectively steal their labor and ideas while denying them agency. Sor Juana's fierce defense of women's right to education and intellectual participation was a claim for ownership: ownership of one's voice, one's thoughts, and one's contribution to human knowledge. In libertarian terms, epistemic injustice violates property rights in the most fundamental sense—control over one's own cognitive output. Her tradition insists that justice requires recognizing all people as legitimate owners of their knowledge and entitled to its fruits without discrimination or appropriation.