La Execración contra los judíos de Francisco de Quevedo: Antisemitismo y biopolítica en la España imperial

Francisco de Quevedo's Execración contra los judíos (1633) stands as a stark and concentrated expression of the pronounced antisemitism that pervades his literary corpus. In this brief but intense treatise, Quevedo crystallizes themes that Barbara Fuchs identifies as part of Spain's "racial hysteria," intertwining anxieties over religious difference, racial purity, and covert cultural practices. The text fuses theological and biological arguments, portraying Jewish identity as simultaneously spiritual and hereditary, thus justifying their exclusion on multiple fronts—religious, racial, cultural, political, and economic. Quevedo's discourse reveals an early articulation of biopolitical thought, advocating for the control of Jewish bodies and subjectivities through state mechanisms, foreshadowing modern techniques of population management. As such, Execración contra los judíos offers critical insight into early modern Europe's evolving strategies of domination, echoing the dynamics of power and control later theorized by Michel Foucault in his analysis of biopower.