Transforming the Enemy in Spanish Culture. The Conquest through the Lens of Textual and Visual Multiplicity by Lauren Beck (review)

Lauren Beck’s monograph Transforming the Enemy in Spanish Culture aims to work interdisciplinarily in order to understand differing representations of the enemies of Spain in the early modern period, primarily through the lens of the enemy as Muslim. Over several chapters Beck explores different sorts of representation, with such varying emphases as narrative chronicles written by agents of the Spanish crown; illustrations of these chronicles for non-Spanish Protestant audiences; medieval images of soldiers during the Spanish Reconquest of Iberia; and legal edicts pronounced in the Americas against the practice of Islam. The variety of sources is one of the strengths of the study, and emphasizes that the implicit audiences for this text include dual disciplinary audiences – history and literary studies – that will privilege the use of archival sources and literary analysis in the work. Though the text focuses on Spain as a cultural center in its own right, readings of texts from other parts of Europe and from the Spanish colonies in the Americas enrich an understanding of a hegemonic Spanish mindset through centuries. Beck’s strongest work deals with pieces prior to the 18^th century, making it a text of particular interest for scholars of the early-modern period.

The main interest of this project is to explore what the representation of the “enemy” can reveal about the mindset of those who create said representations. Transforming the Enemy is divided into three parts of two chapters each that address representations of the enemy in general terms, though almost exclusively through the lens of Spanish understandings of Islam; representations of Islam in the Americas; and physical Muslim presence in the Americas coupled with images of the Black Legend. Beck later clarifies that two different frameworks “that have discursively defined and shaped the representation of the Spanish conquest” (283) are identified in the monograph: a symbolic relationship between Islam and North America, and the de-occidentalization of Spain in the form of the Black Legend. Beck opens with a narrative of Spanish history between roughly 700 and 1500 in order to propose a relationship between the mindsets prevalent in the Christian-Visigoth populations during the Reconquest and the representation of indigenous peoples in the Americas during the European Conquest in order to contrast this mindset with that of European Protestants. The introduction also briefly explores concepts surrounding primary sources, authenticity, and the history of the book in order to argue for an understanding of the changing importance of images and text and the relationship between them. While all of these pieces are interesting, they at times do not hang together in a way that makes clear to the reader why they matter to an overarching argument in the book.

Part 1 includes representations read in both narrative and image. Beck focuses on patterns of labelling populations viewed as other alongside historiographical understandings of the shifting populations of the Iberian Peninsula. For example, the instability of narratives and images for Mozarabs illustrate the thorny representational issues Beck studies, particularly her conclusion that Spanish ideologies regarding cultural Islamification and linguistic Arabization both conflate language with religion in a way that may not do justice to the populations being represented. The unstable narrative representation of moriscos, moros, sarracenos, or árabes contrasts with the binary use of images such as the crescent; architectural features such as the horseshoe-shaped archway and yamur; and Crusade-related images such as the scimitar and turban and the connection of this imagery with Biblical villains. The examples Beck gives are rich and engaging, and her analytical work shines here.

The second part of the monograph centers on images, particularly cartography. Beck traces changes throughout different editions, noting that in the 19^th century most references to Islam in chronicles of the conquest are removed because, from the perspective of the editors, they seem out of place. Where earlier editions transformed the spaces and peoples of...