Knowledge Production Beyond Dominance

Sor Juana challenged the authority of institutions that claimed monopoly on truth while excluding her voice. Similarly, Western science has long treated animals as objects of study rather than subjects of knowledge, producing understanding designed to justify exploitation. Sor Juana's own intellectual work—her observation, her questioning, her refusal to accept received doctrine—models an alternative epistemology. In animal ethics, this means valuing diverse ways of knowing: indigenous practices that honor animals as kin, ethological observations that reveal animal agency, and testimonies from those who work closely with animals. It means questioning scientific frameworks that reduce animals to data points serving human interests. Knowledge production beyond dominance requires intellectual humility—recognizing that humans do not possess complete understanding of other species' experiences. Sor Juana's defense of the right to question and investigate becomes, in animal ethics, the right to resist reductive definitions of what animals are and what they deserve.