As in the Middle Ages, Muslims in the Renaissance were viewed as creatures alienated from God, a fact demonstrated in the monstrous races featured in Shakespearean-era dramas. The role of imagination is a critical part of this story. The English had a particularly astute understanding of how this faculty functioned in relation to the mind; in fact, this understanding bears an uncanny resemblance to Bourdieu’s concern with fantasy masquerading as reality. According to this view, “[a] lways the imagination of fantasy is seen as a power operating in a framework of other faculties and functions. In a definite hierarchical order of communication, knowledge travels from the so-called 'outer' senses (the five primary senses), to the 'inner' (Common Sense, Imagination and/or Fantasy, Sensible Reason, and Memory, which occupy cells in the brain), and thus to the highest rational, incorporeal powers (the Intellect or Wit or Understanding, and the Will).” The internalization of fantasies about Jews and Muslims depended upon “the transmission of data through a hierarchy of powers.”

XREF: The hierarchy of sense-to-intellect faculties echoes early modern faculty psychology and connects to Bourdieu's concept of fantasy masquerading as reality. SEED: A possible essay comparing premodern faculty psychology to modern theories of unconscious bias and stereotype formation.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 238