The Question as Epistemological Privilege

Sor Juana's greatest power lay not in providing answers but in asking questions that destabilized certainty. To question authority, tradition, and doctrine is a privilege—one systematically denied to women, the enslaved, and the colonized. Sor Juana acknowledged this privilege by exercising it boldly, even when doing so risked institutional punishment. This concept frames questioning itself as a marker of intellectual freedom that must be actively claimed and defended. In recognizing our privilege to ask questions, we confront how many voices are silenced by systems that punish inquiry from the marginalized. The Sorjuanine approach suggests that acknowledging this privilege means creating spaces where others can question without fear. It inverts the power dynamic: the questioner becomes responsible not for having answers but for opening inquiry as a collective practice.