The Critique of Unjust Knowledge Systems

Sor Juana operated within a knowledge system that denied women's intellectual capacity and restricted their access to books, debate, and public expression. Her act of resistance was not primarily political but epistemological: she insisted on her right to question, learn, and contribute to understanding. This concept applies to civil disobedience across traditions by highlighting how power operates through gatekeeping knowledge itself. Whether colonial systems that delegitimize indigenous wisdom, patriarchal structures that silence women scholars, or authoritarian regimes that control information, civil disobedience often begins with rejecting the framework that declares certain people unfit to know. Sor Juana's example shows that disobeying laws protecting unjust knowledge systems is an act of intellectual liberation, relevant to contemporary movements for epistemic justice, educational rights, and the decolonization of learning.