Humanities

An ethnopharmacognostic survey on the traditional pharmaceutical knowledge (TPhK) of old and newly introduced natural remedies used for healing humans in a small mountainous area in Central Lucania, inland southern Italy, was carried out using classical ethnographical and ethnobiological methods. Approximately 110 remedies of plant origin (belonging to 103 botanical taxa), 30 of animal origin and 20 mineral or industrial (non-pharmaceutical) products were recorded. Among these remedies, the common use of the aerial parts of Hypericum hircinum and the leaves of Morus alba against cough, and the uncommon uses of Salvia argentea leaves as a haemostatic, of Erigeron acer roots to relieve tooth-aches and arthritic pains, and Elaphe quatuorlineata snake fat for rheumatism are reported for first time in Italy. Moreover, diverse medicinal plants used for uncommon medical purposes and a few biological ingredients used in food preparations with the aim to improve human health were identified. Pharmacological and toxicological considerations relating to possible applications of the recorded traditional knowledge in modern evidence-based medicine are discussed as well. The data that we present here could suggest new inputs for further phytochemical and pharmacological studies among Mediterranean folk pharmacopoeias, and also for sustaining environmentally integrated projects focused on of the maintenance of TPhK via breeding or controlled gathering activities of local medicinal species.

CITATIONS 96 READS 116 4 authors: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Fruits of Lycium spp.--developing a quality assessment system and value chain analysis: an interdisciplinary ethnobotanical case study View project Biodiversity and Medicines: metabolite profiles and pharmaceutical potential of some Caucasian endemic medicinal and nutraceutical plants View project Abstract Intercultural studies about the methods of use and perceptions of traditional remedies in Europe are strategically important in understanding how pharmaceutical means in our multicultural modern societies are differently accepted by diverse ethnic groups. In this survey, we analysed the biological means traditionally used in the ethnomedicine of three Ž . Ž Arbereshe ethnic Albanians communities in the Vulture area northern Lucania, southern.

An ethnopharmaceutical study focused on domestic cosmetics, cosmeceuticals, and remedies to heal skin diseases traditionally used in the inland part of the Marches region (Central-Eastern Italy) has been conducted. At present, traditional knowledge concerning home-made phytocosmetics is represented by both the remnants of an orally transmitted folk heritage and also by new forms of knowledge, sometimes coming from popular phytotherapeutical books and the mass media (out of the scope of this survey), but also as a result of recent migration trends from Eastern Europe.

Aim of study: One-third of botanical remedies from southern Italy are used to treat skin and soft tissue infection (SSTI). Staphylococcus aureus, a common cause of SSTI, has generated increasing concern due to drug resistance. Many plants possess antimicrobial agents and provide effective remedies for SSTI. Our aim was to investigate plants from different ethnobotanical usage groups for inhibition of growth and biofilms in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Materials and methods: Three groups were assessed: plant remedies for SSTI, plant remedies not involving the skin, and plants with no ethnomedical application. We screened 168 extracts, representing 104 botanical species, for activity against MRSA (ATCC 33593). We employed broth dilution methods to determine the MIC after 18 h growth using an optical density (OD 600nm ) reading. Anti-biofilm effects were assessed by growing biofilms for 40 h, then fixing and staining with crystal violet. After washing, 10% Tween 80 was added and OD 570nm readings were taken. Results: Extracts from 10 plants exhibited an IC 50 ≤ 32 g/ml for biofilm inhibition: Lonicera alpigena, Castanea sativa, Juglans regia, Ballota nigra, Rosmarinus officinalis, Leopoldia comosa, Malva sylvestris, Cyclamen hederifolium, Rosa canina, and Rubus ulmifolius. Limited bacteriostatic activity was evident.

Background: This study documents the use of medicinal plants from the Mustang district of the north-central part of Nepal. Traditional botanical medicine is the primary mode of healthcare for most of the population of this district and traditional Tibetan doctors (Amchi) serve as the local medical experts.

A recipient of Western literary awards, such as “The Prix Goncourt,” Tahar Ben Jelloun has become a prominent Maghrebi author. His fiction has circulated widely; his novels L'Enfant de sable (1985) and La Nuit sacrée (1987), for instance, have been translated into several languages, granting Ben Jelloun entry into the sphere of World Literature. I argue that the success of Ben Jelloun’s work —tremendously boosted by his use of French — is attributed mostly to his talent in offering an exoticized account of Moroccan society, a trajectory that courts Western readers and the global market, and problematizes the place his works occupy in World Literature.

Moroccan society throughout the Twentieth Century CE was fairly conservative and heavily influenced by the Islamic tradition. A significant amount of literature – especially the one penned in Arabic – published in Morocco in the last century manifested a tendency that avoided flouting, in any significant way,  the social and religious norms prevalent in the country. A number of writers addressed issues of public concern, such as poverty; (illicit) immigration; corruption; the legacy of Franco-Spanish colonialism; Moroccan subjectivity, memory, and imaginary; and others. In particular, literature criticizing or responding to the former colonizers – especially the French– and the legacy of the colonial era abounded in Morocco post-1956. Moroccan writer, Mohamed Choukri, provides a curious case within this paradigm. His writing trajectory is characterized by rebellion, counterculture, and controversy. In his attempts to address the social ills within Moroccan society post-Independence, he produced a literature somehow different from his contemporaries, a literature that is audaciously non-conformist and highly controversial.

Current performance practice and research are caught in an ambiguous compromise comparable to what Jacques Derrida has evocatively termed 'archive fever'. Archival revivals -from the digitization of performance, to re-enactments of past traumas and art works, to the staging of interventions into existing archives -place the discourses of preservation and intervention in creative tension, inscribing an anxiety towards ephemerality while simultaneously critiquing conservation. Theatre's liveness and transience are often accompanied by the urgent need for documentation before they enter the mnemonic field of embodied memory. Still, archived documentations of live performance shall never capture the traces of lived yet ephemeral experience.

The late-19th century acceleration of European colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa gave rise to a range of cultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic projects seeking to restructure Islamicate societies after modern Europe. Such Eurocentric projects were predominantly advanced through subordinating Islamicate traditions, cultures, and identities. This traumatic historical experience evokes the image of a Muslim other laid on the Procrustean bed of European modernity; Islamicate traditions, cultures, and identities were either stretched out of shape or sawed off so that they would fit the hegemonic conception of modernity.

Ten years after Morocco gained its independence from France and Spain in 1956, the relatively brief appearance of the journal Souffles (1966–1972) and its Arabic companion Anfās (1971–1972) served as the umbrella for an avant-garde movement with multi-faceted literary, cultural, and political goals. The journal published work by leftist intellectuals who saw Morocco and other newly-independent Maghrebi and African countries to be plagued by two different, but interrelated, misfortunes: first, that of French economic, cultural, and political domination; and second, that of the rule of self-serving authoritarian regimes, namely the dictatorial reign of King Hassan II of Morocco. This article argues that the creation of Souffles triggered the birth of a movement which sought – on the one hand – to rethink and redefine literature and national culture, and – on the other – to deconstruct various forms of authority (the state, God, tradition, religion, patriarchy, etc.) in order to delegitimize the theocratic and autocratic regime of King Hassan II and potentially other regimes in Africa and the Arab world.

In the wake of unimaginable atrocities committed by militants of so called ISIS or ISIS sympathizers and other terror groups around the world, a number of reform-minded Muslims are calling for an honest conversation about links between Islamic doctrine(s) and human rights abuses. Maajid Nawaz and Irshad Manji are two prominent voices advocating the revival of the Islamic tradition of ijtihad (independent reasoning) in hopes of bringing about a twenty-first-century Muslim reformation. They take issue with the term ‘Islamophobia,’ which they consider an unnecessary burden that stifles any open discussion of Islam and its demerits. Criticism of Islam or any other religion or ideology, following Nawaz and Manji, must be upheld, and should be viewed as consistent with the secular right to freedom of expression. In other words, Islam should not rise above criticism. Such a stance affirms that religious doctrines and/or cultural practices—in contrast to the people who adhere to such doctrines or engage in such practices—do not in themselves have rights, for such rights are granted to people, rather than to ideas or ideologies or cultures. Human rights must assume priority over religious and/or cultural rights.

This article argues that the subversive overtones in Aḥmad al-Madīnī's novel Zaman bayna l-wilāda wa l-ḥulm (Time between Birth and Dream, 1974) target two distinct poles of authority, textual and extra-textual. The novel adopts what I call “a poetics of dissent,” with a penchant for rebellion against the classical Arabic novel-seen as a subset of the European realist novel-and the Arab-Moslem heritage. Published a few years after the 1967 Naksa, and two failed coups d'état in 1971 and 1972 in Morocco, the novel paints a gloomy picture of life in Morocco and the Arab world. The novel's experimental gymnastics is an attempt to achieve a formal shift in literary technique and an ideological shift in the politics of literary representation. A politization of form that goes hand in hand with a formalization of politics emerges as a critical dialectic in Zaman and by extension Moroccan experimental literature post-Independence.

The rise and spread of Jihadist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the atrocities they have perpetrated in various Muslim territories and Western cities have raised the alarm about the supposed threat Islam poses to Europe— and to the West more broadly. In Europe, the resurgence of populist, right-wing politics was connected in no small part to the wide audience reached by discourses warning against the ‘threat’ immigrants—especially Muslims—pose to Western civilization. As dramatized threats and fears become a political factor of prime importance, the following question cannot but impose itself. Is an Abrahamic religion like Islam, with as many as 1.8 billion adherents, an existential threat to the West? Put differently, is Islam inherently incompatible with liberal Western values? To answer these questions, this chapter places Islam within its centuries-old tradition and regards it as a general category. It compares and contrasts such a category with various interpretations thereof, including Islamism, Jihadism, and Sufism. The chapter’s historical thrust is the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty- first century—a period that has witnessed the rise and flourishing of Islamism, Jihadism, and right-wing politics in Europe and other Western locales. Departing from the views of various thinkers, this essay argues that, while Islamism/ Jihadism might pose a concrete threat to Western societies, Islam is not inherently antagonistic to the West or to freedom.

Keywords: Islam, the West, Far Right, identity politics, orientalism, colonialism

This article analyses Mohamed Berrada’s novel Luʿbat al-nisyān (1987, The Game of Forgetting, 1996), focusing on the book’s unorthodox narrative design, where multiplicity, metafiction, and fragmentation are strategic tools that bring to light the author’s vision of (post)modernist literature in a postcolonial nation. The article examines how the novel’s compelling experimental quality and efficacious engagement of cultural and socio-political issues are at work, highlighting thereby the text’s commitment overtones. The novel embeds narrative multiplicity and fragmentation within a key dialectic that informs and runs through the entire text: remembering and forgetting. These two acts (remembering and forgetting) provide discursive spheres that enhance the imagination of both the author and the reader, who enter into an unspoken partnership to take the literary text into vast interpretive realms, thus expanding and elevating the horizons of contemporary Moroccan and Arabic literature. Overall, Berrada resorts to quintessentially (post)modernist techniques – such as multiplicity, fragmentation, and metanarrative – anchored in the overarching game/dialectic of remembering and forgetting in order to deliver implicit social and political critique.

This article discusses the politics of form in ʿ Abdullāh al-ʿ Arwī's 1989 ʾAwrāq: sīrat Idrīs al-dhihniyyah (Papers: Idrīs's Intellectual Biography), an important contribution to Moroccan experimental literature in the postcolonial era. Together with Muḥammad Barrādah's 1987 novel Luʿbat al-nisyān (The Game of Forgetting, 1996), Awrāq consolidated the experimental turn in the Moroccan literary scene, aiding thereby its ascent to the mainstream. ʾAwrāq is a two-layered text, presenting the reader with, first, a stack of papers of various sorts belonging to the diseased protagonist Idrīs, and second, the commentaries on this archive by the narrator and Shuʿ ayb. The book constantly oscillates between these two layers, attempting in the process to shake the dominant realist form and its underlying European point of reference. ʾAwrāq's search for its best form parallels Idrīs's quest to restore, or be reconciled to, his identity in the context of France and Europe's colonial project and its legacy. The text's experimentalism is thus strategically harnessed to wrestle, within the diegesis, with various political and sociocultural challenges facing Morocco, and the Arab/Arabo-Amazigh world more broadly, in the postcolonial era-including the colossal task of reconciling the Islamic heritage (al-turāth) with hegemonic Western discourses of modernity.

This article probes the significance of Morocco's urban space gradually welcoming/embracing Tamazight, a critical step in a potential reconfiguration of the larger North Africa that would account for the region's indigeneity and multilingualism. It further seeks to examine the extent to which the linguistic shifts taking place in Morocco's public sphere, resulting from the 2011 amended constitution, could in the long term generate an epistemic shift in Moroccan consciousness and imaginary. In terms of methodology, this study relies on quantitative and qualitative data accumulated inside and outside of Morocco, specifically photos taken in summer 2022 as well questionnaires completed by Moroccan nationals of Amazigh origin in the same year. The findings in this data are illuminating and shed some light on how the Moroccan Amazigh (especially the educated class) view the Amazigh cultural movement underway and the corresponding debate over language in Morocco. Although limited, this data-while showcasing some of the accomplishments of the Amazigh cultural movement-provides a window into the kinds of challenges facing this movement in Morocco and by extension in the Maghreb and North Africa.

The Experimental Turn in the Moroccan Novel, 1976-1989 examines the trajectory of the Moroccan experimental novel and makes a link between its emergence in the early-mid 1970s and the Arab defeat in the six-day war with Israel in 1967.

Drawing on works by Muḥammad Barrādah, ʿAbdullāh al-ʿArwī, Aḥmad al-Madīnī, and others, the book contends that the Moroccan experimental novel reflects an historic turning point and transitional cultural landscape. It further shows that the experimental novel laid the ground for a different vision of literature, an important feature of which was the intent to surpass the traditional realist model as executed by Moroccan novelist ʿAbdulkarīm Ghallāb (1919–2017) and Egyptian Nobel laureate Najīb Maḥfūẓ (1911–2006). This new vision of literature seeks to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political.

This book will be an important contribution to debates around Moroccan/Arabic/Maghrebi literature, as well as to the field of literary experimentalism more broadly.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Mapping al-Tajrīb in the Moroccan and Arabic Novel

Chapter 1: The New Novel in Morocco and the Arab World and the Question of Reception

Chapter 2: Al-Tajrīb (Experimentation), al-Turāth (Heritage), and The New Moroccan Novel: Between Innovation and Imitation

Chapter 3: Aḥmad al-Madīnī’s Zaman bayna al-Wilādah wa al-Ḥulm: Writing the Self and Flouting Systems of Authority

Chapter 4: Muḥammad Barrādah’s The Game of Forgetting: Experimental Multiplicity, Ludic Memory, and Sexual Politics

Chapter 5: ʿAbdullāh al-ʿArwī’s ʾAwrāq Sīrat Idrīs al-Dhihniyyah: The Politics of Form as an Allegory for the State of Crisis

Conclusion

Index