Marranos were Spanish or Portuguese Jews who converted to
Christianity at the time of the Spanish Inquisition to avoid being
massacred or forced to flee but who continued to practise Judaism
in secret. They were persecuted by the first racist blood laws but
the water of forced baptism was not enough to make them assimilate.
Donatella Di Cesare sees the marranos as the quintessential figures
of the modern condition: the marranos were not just those whom
modernity cast out as the 'other', but were those 'others' who were
forced to disavow their beliefs and conceal themselves. They became
'the other of the other', doubly excluded, condemned to a life of
existential duplicity with no way out, spurned by both Catholics
and Jews and unable to belong fully to either community. But this
double life of the marranos turned out to be a secret source of
strength. Doubly estranged, with no possibility of redemption, the
marranos became modernity's first true radicals. Dissidents out of
necessity, they inaugurated modernity with their ambivalence and
their split self. And their story is not over. By treating the
history of the marranos as a prism through which to grasp the
defining features of modernity, this highly original book will be
of interest to a wide readership.
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