Subaltern Privacy: Echoes of The Resistance in the Hispanic World

forthcoming

During the early modern period, the Spanish monarchy treated its religious minorities mercilessly. From 1492 onwards, the Crown officially banned Judaism and Islam from its territory and offered their followers the possibility to convert to Catholicism and remain in the Iberian Peninsula. Many members of these communities accepted baptism, but a significant number of these new Christians limited their conversion to the official and public sphere. Privately, they continued to practice their pre-conversion beliefs, customs, and traditions. The high level of exposure in everyday life meant that many of them were exposed and suspicions of being false Christians spread throughout the kingdom. Society soon began to label converts as heretics and traitors, discriminating against them, and officially excluding them from public life based on their religious background and ethnicity. Faced with social stigma and the fear of being accused before the Inquisition, the descendants of these minorities began to eradicate all traces that identified them as converts—keeping their true identity and all links with their ancestors in the strictest secrecy. In this scenario of intolerance, hatred, and religious fanaticism, the project “Subaltern Privacy: Echoes of The Resistance in the Hispanic World” (SUBPRIVACY) will focus on the resistance practiced by subaltern groups in Spain (Jew converts, Moorish, crypto-Jews, and crypto-Muslims) against the assimilation, surveillance, and punishment policies of the Hispanic establishment. Its main objective will be to examine the resistance actions of these groups designed to preserve their ancient faith, culture, and collective memory underground, using the historical notions of privacy as an analytical lens.