Post-colonial theory focuses on the problem of cultural representation and the consequent manner in which human subjects become protagonists of consciousness. In particular, it takes into consideration cultural hybridities, especially those circumstances where individuals struggle to define themselves as subjects along the frontiers of cultures in contact, paying special heed to the need of human subjects continually to renegotiate their social position in terms of constantly changing synergies of power. The fields of cultural history, as well as the ethnography of communication (e.g., studies by Geertz and Darnton), offer numerous possibilities for refocusing, nuancing and problematizing our understanding of the existence of the conversos in pre-Expulsion Castile; and by extension, for deepening our knowledge of the exchanges between late medieval Iberian ethnicities and the processes of their transculturation. Indeed, scholars of the Iberian medieval past will no doubt recognize the affinities between contemporary post-colonial studies and the work of Spanish cultural critics and historians like Castro, Caro Baroja and Domínguez Ortiz, as well as most of their immediate successors on both sides of the Atlantic, all of whom sought to explore avant la lettre many of the issues that are at the center of the current postcolonial research agenda. Hence, for Hispanists, reading the post-colonial critics today often produces a sense of déjà vu.

Yet despite the similarities and points of recognition, contemporary postcolonial theory and practice offers Hispanic Studies important suggestions for ways both to broaden and nuance – refocus and problematize – the multicultural domain of the Hispano-medieval world.