Cook ands Ahmed on the Melancholia of Suppression

[karla_stephan]

The Moriscos were Spanish Muslims who were forced to convert and practice Christianity so as to not be seen as undermining the Catholic community and the Crown. They practiced aspects of Islam in private to not be accused of being unloyal politically. Yet in the same ways that there is a spectrum of migrants, there was a spectrum of Moriscos and their beliefs; some fully clung to Catholicism while others still felt and practiced as Muslims. Their cultural aspects such as food and clothing were also under suspicion for being too Islamic so there was a lot of assimilation either by choice or by force. This assimilation into the dominant Catholic culture reminded me of Sara Ahmed’s discussions from the last class on being the perfect immigrant who assimilates for the social cohesion of the nation. The core of both of these schools of thought is in the colonial ruling power of the British Empire. The need to adhere to the public image, and appearance, and become European was a lot of pressure for the Moriscos and similarly for migrants that Ahmed speaks to. The repression of signs of Islam affected the Moriscos by taking their agency and their beliefs. There is a melancholia that Ahmed talks about in the Moriscos that comes from the cutting off of that history from them.