The principle that access to knowledge, the right to speak and be heard, and intellectual recognition are fundamental human rights and matters of justice.
Sor Juana fought for the right to be taken seriously as a thinker, to participate in intellectual debate, to be respected as someone worthy of education. She understood that denying women knowledge was denying them dignity and justice. This concept names epistemic rights—the right to learn, to think, to be recognized as a knower. Across cultures and history, marginalized groups are systematically excluded from knowledge production and intellectual authority: women from universities, colonized peoples from writing their own histories, poor communities from decision-making. Denying epistemic rights denies people the dignity of being subjects rather than objects of knowledge. Sor Juana's work reveals that identity formation is inseparable from epistemic justice—being able to claim your own story, interpret your own experience, contribute to collective knowledge. Justice for identity means ensuring that all people, regardless of gender, race, class, or origin, have genuine access to knowledge and genuine recognition as knowers. Her intellectual legacy is itself an assertion of justice.
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