Intellectual Resistance to Colonial Extraction

Sor Juana's defiant intellectual work emerged from colonial contexts where knowledge itself was weaponized to justify domination. She insisted on the right to think, question, and create meaning independently—a radical act in her time. Applied to climate justice, this concept recognizes that the same colonial logic extracting resources from the Global South mirrors the epistemic violence that dismisses Indigenous knowledge systems and local climate solutions. We must resist the narrative that only Western scientific institutions hold valid environmental knowledge. Climate justice demands intellectual decolonization: centering Indigenous science, community-based research, and the voices of those most affected by planetary destruction. This mirrors Sor Juana's insistence that marginalized thinkers have irreplaceable intellectual contributions that challenge dominant power structures and offer alternative pathways toward sustainable futures.