Intellectual Authority of the Marginalized

Sor Juana fought for her intellectual authority despite gendered and colonial constraints, arguing that knowledge-seekers deserve respect regardless of social position. This principle directly applies to climate justice: those facing the severest impacts—Indigenous communities, Global South nations, frontline workers—possess critical expertise from lived experience that Western scientific institutions have historically dismissed. Climate action that excludes these voices reproduces the same power structures that created the crisis. By centering marginalized intellectual authority, we recognize that climate solutions require not just technical data but the wisdom of those already adapting to ecological breakdown. This reframes who counts as an expert and legitimizes community-led environmental resistance as knowledge production itself.