Epistemic Justice and Knowledge Vindication

Sor Juana wrote and argued within Catholic scholastic frameworks yet preserved attention to indigenous Mexican reality, demonstrating how decolonized knowledge work involves both critique of dominant systems and recovery of suppressed truths. Epistemic Justice in postcolonial contexts means actively restoring credibility to knowledges that colonialism delegitimized—indigenous cosmologies, oral traditions, women's wisdom, spiritual practices, and community-based understanding. It requires examining whose knowledge counts as valid, who is positioned as knower or teacher, and whose perspectives are erased. Decolonization involves vindicating not just oppressed peoples but the ways they understand and interpret the world. This includes sacred knowledge, embodied wisdom, relational understanding, and non-written forms of transmission. Sor Juana's intellectual defense of women's right to learn and contribute to knowledge systems establishes a precedent for asserting that marginalized communities possess valid, valuable ways of knowing that deserve institutional recognition and integration.