Epistemic Justice and the Authority to Know

Epistemic justice means being recognized as someone whose knowledge, interpretation, and reasoning matter. Sor Juana faced epistemic injustice: her learning was dismissed as mere feminine accomplishment rather than genuine scholarship; her theological interpretations were questioned not on merit but because she was a woman. This concept examines the privilege of being believed, of having your knowledge treated as legitimate and worthy of engagement. Sor Juana had to fight constantly for her ideas to be taken seriously. She had to display her erudition far beyond what male scholars required, proving herself repeatedly. This reveals how privilege operates epistemically: some people are presumed knowledgeable, while others must prove it constantly. Acknowledging epistemic privilege means recognizing that being heard, trusted, and cited as an authority is unevenly distributed. Sor Juana's struggle for recognition shows that women, the colonized, the poor, and the marginalized face systematic doubts about their capacity to think.