Constructing Racialized Difference in Early Spain: Key Language and Concepts

The presentation will examine various aspects of the lexicon and semantics that helped in the conceptual construction of social and religious inferiority during the late Middle Ages. Such construction rests on the central role assigned to physical as well as religious difference, a difference marked by filth and the transmissibility of personal defect, stain, or ‘raza’. It is of vital importance to understand the processes by which this construction was carried out and the ways in which it was applied to religious minorities and to certain strata of the Iberian population. The presentation will show how the concept and terminology associated with ‘raza’ were formed in the late Middle Ages from the metaphorical uses of a vocabulary related to defects and stains.