Epistemic Justice in Animal Studies

Sor Juana advocated fiercely for the legitimacy of different forms of knowledge, challenging the monopoly of institutional authorities on truth. She valued empirical observation, creative insight, and philosophical reasoning as equally important forms of knowing. Epistemically, we must similarly challenge the dominance of reductionist science that treats animals as mere mechanism. Indigenous peoples have developed sophisticated, long-tested knowledge about animal behavior, ecology, and moral relationship. Animal caretakers, sanctuaries, and communities living closely with animals develop practical wisdom about their needs and capacities. This concept insists that understanding animal moral status requires multiple epistemologies—scientific, traditional, experiential, and imaginative. It critiques frameworks that dismiss non-Western ways of knowing animals as unscientific or sentimental. True justice in animal consideration means recognizing that diverse communities hold legitimate knowledge about our relationships with other species, and that dominant Western frameworks have often obscured rather than revealed animal reality.