Epistemic Justice and Voice

Sor Juana demanded that her intellectual voice be heard and credited as legitimate despite her marginal social position. Epistemic justice addresses the systematic denial of credibility to speakers and knowers based on prejudice and social location. In poverty contexts, epistemic injustice manifests when poor people's understanding of their own circumstances, needs, and solutions are discounted by authorities, experts, or institutions. Sor Juana's famous Response to Sor Filotea asserts her right to interpret, question, and contribute to intellectual discourse. Achieving epistemic justice requires not only giving poor people platforms but fundamentally respecting their knowledge production and lived expertise. This concept challenges the assumption that poverty denotes ignorance, that poor people lack insight into their situations, or that their voices should be filtered through institutional interpreters. Recognizing epistemic justice means creating conditions where people experiencing poverty can articulate their own understanding of identity, dignity, and solutions, and where their knowledge is genuinely credited and valued in public discourse.