Systemic Harm Recognition and Structural Justice

Sor Juana experienced harm not from isolated incidents but from systematic suppression: gender discrimination, ecclesiastical control of knowledge, silencing of women's voices. Her writings expose how personal injuries are embedded in structural injustice. This insight reframes restorative approaches to harm: we cannot restore justice by treating violence, theft, or abuse as purely individual incidents disconnected from systemic inequalities. Restorative justice informed by Sor Juana's analysis asks: What systems enabled this harm? How do class, gender, race, or religious hierarchies factor into what happened? A harmer may need restoration, but the community may need structural transformation. Her intellectual legacy demands that we examine whether our justice processes themselves perpetuate the same hierarchies that produced the original harm. True restoration requires interrogating and reforming the conditions that made harm possible, not merely punishing individuals while systems remain unchanged.