The framework that recognizes whose knowledge counts as legitimate, who gets to create it, and how marginalized people claim authority within contested intellectual domains.
Sor Juana's fight to access theological, philosophical, and scientific texts—domains officially closed to women—reveals knowledge itself as a contested territory of power. Intersectional practice must examine which bodies are permitted to know, teach, and create knowledge in different fields. A woman of mixed heritage pursuing theology faced compounded barriers—gender-based exclusion from formal education, racialized suspicion of her intellectual capacity, and colonial restrictions on indigenous intellectual authority. This concept asks: Who inherits access to which knowledge systems? How do intersecting identities shape one's relationship to learning? How can marginalized people assert intellectual authority in spaces structured to deny their legitimacy? It validates the knowledge of those excluded from formal institutions and recognizes how intersectional identities carry different relationships to academic, spiritual, practical, and cultural knowledge systems.
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