Epistemic Injustice and Historical Erasure

Sor Juana wrote in a world that denied women—especially women of mixed race and colonial status—the authority to speak on theology, philosophy, and science. Her work was suppressed, her authorship questioned, and her intellectual legacy diminished. This exemplifies epistemic injustice: the systematic discrediting of entire communities' knowledge and experience. In reparations philosophy, epistemic injustice names a specific harm: the colonization of narrative itself. Indigenous histories are rewritten by colonizers; African diasporic contributions are attributed to white scholars; women's intellectual work is credited to men. Reparations must therefore include epistemic repair: restoring authorship, amplifying suppressed voices, funding counter-narratives, and rebuilding knowledge systems that colonialism destroyed. Sor Juana's retrieval from obscurity models this restorative work.