Concepts of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity in Medieval Iberia

Abstract

Travel writers between the early thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries racialize their perception of alien peoples. The exact terms of that perception inevitably differ from those that characterize the racializing discourses of later centuries. We must, therefore, account for the texts’ particular and idiosyncratic ways of perceiving, representing, and discussing the kinds of social phenomena that present-day political science, sociology, and anthropology discuss under the headings of race, caste, and indigeneity. At the same time, we must bear in mind that the latter concepts are largely chimerical figments of the racializing imagination. To distinguish between medieval and modern versions of these concepts, or to discern the ways in which the former perhaps mutate into the latter, is to contrast different styles of racializing fantasy. In effecting this differentiation, we must bear in mind the two dimensions of racialization. One encompasses what might be called the delusional architecture of this kind of thinking, that is, the articulation and diffusion of problematic concepts and imaginary stereotypes. The other dimension comprises real-world conditions and outcomes as they are affected by that architecture.