Thinking with the renegade

Abstract

In this essay, I explore the coming into being of the figure of the medieval renegade as the point at which imperial affiliations meet individual embodiment, where shifting politics become personally manifested. I suggest that the identity of the renegade as a cultural figure - embodying an unstable kind of convert, blending resistance with surface compliance - developed in the crucible of conflict between Ottoman Muslims and Christians in the later medieval Mediterranean. In the renegade, dermal and cultural similarity must be negated through other markers of difference, such as clothing or facial hair, as the renegade embodies partial versions of both pre- and post-conversion identities. This renegade becomes a trope and a plot device representing the ambiguities and doubts of proto-colonial entanglement.