bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The “Singular Logic of the Retreat”
Authors: Van Den Abbeele Georges
Published: January 2024

This chapter follows the germination of Nancy’s political thinking by analyzing the sense of one of Nancy’s guiding philosophical tropes, the critical and contradictory French word retrait, which is usually translated as withdrawal, but which also implies a re-drawing or re-inscribing of a trait or trace. Deriving the concept of “retreat” from its unconventional use in Derrida’s discussion of metaphor, Nancy and his collaborator Lacoue-Labarthe are shown to develop the concept into a powerful engine of political critique articulated with Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism, on the one hand, and Freud’s analysis of mass psychology, on the other. The “retreat of the political” thus comes to designate an essence of the political that is not actually political, something before or behind the polis that underwrites a form of being together that seeks something more than mere life. Remarkably, it is the figure of the mother that appears in Nancy’s thinking as the very modelling of the retreat, as the sense of a withdrawal that is also the singularity of birth, the very corporeal interruption that defines the ethos of being both together and apart.
Corpus interruptus
Authors: Van Den Abbeele Georges
Published: January 2024

This chapter addresses the differential treatment of sense in Nancy by analyzing Corpus and his writings on the body, aesthetics, and sexuality, notably Sexistence, as well as Corpus II and III, and then revisiting his pivotal early writings on art and aesthetics. Nancy’s expansive definition of sense is shown to guide his broader analyses of sensation in his definition of the body as the “interval between two senses,” that is, the body as itself a space of interruption. Not the locus of some “common sense” but sense itself as uncommon. What he provocatively terms “sexistence,” in the work by that title, matters, then, less for the analysis of sexuality per se, than for Nancy’s uncommon positioning of eros in relation to logos and tekhnè. All three categories reinscribe for him the fundamental transcendence of existence or ek-sistence, literally standing outside oneself as what defines oneself as such. It is Nancy’s triangulation of sex, language, and technology (including art) as mutually interruptive that brings the analysis of sense and singularity to a conclusion as the foundational articulation of the world we find ourselves in and whose patency remains the task of philosophy, and of the arts, to disclose as such.
Derrida, Supplements
Authors: Nancy Jean-Luc
Published: January 2024

When Jean-Luc Nancy first encountered the work of Jacques Derrida in the 1960s, he knew he was hearing something new, a voice genuinely of its time. Thinking with and against each other over the course of their long friendship, the two thinkers reshaped the European intellectual landscape. Nancy’s writings on Derrida, collected in this volume, reflect on the elements of their shared concerns with politics, the arts, religion, the fate of deconstruction, and the future of sense. Rather than studies, commentaries, or interpretations of Derrida’s thought, they are responses to his presence—not exactly a presence to self, but a presence in the world.
Derrida da capo
Authors: Nancy Jean-Luc
Published: January 2024

Derrida was interested in metaphysics insofar as he could replay it all over again, da capo. This means looking beyond givenness, beyond what is present at hand, taking seriously Wittgenstein’s motto “the meaning of the world lies outside the world,” even if there is no outside the world. Differance, beyond identity and difference, is this da capo.
Derridapolitics
Authors: Nancy Jean-Luc
Published: January 2024

This chapter is based on a colloquium organized in Chile. Nancy addresses Derrida’s political thinking. Already in their exchanges around the time of the short-lived Center for Research on the Political, Nancy knew that Derrida was suspicious of distinctions between “the political” as an essence and “politics” as accidental. Rather, the crucial distinction was between the unconditional and conditions. Through this lens, Nancy thinks through Derrida’s enduring understanding of politics as the regime of democratic negotiation. We must negotiate with negotiation itself—this is Derrida’s axiom on the subject of politics.
What Is Deconstruction?: An Interview with Federico Ferrari
Authors: Nancy Jean-Luc
Published: January 2024

In conversation with Federico Ferrari, Nancy traces the emergence of the term deconstruction as a translation of Heidegger’s Abbau and its development in the heady days of social and philosophical revolution in the 1960s and 1970s through several turning points in Derrida’s work, eventually reconnecting it with the thought of differance. Shockingly, Nancy announces that deconstruction is behind us now; what is needed in the face of errance and panic is a new thought of struction, a non-construction and piling up.
Afterword: Nothing to See, Nothing to Do
Authors: Düttman Alexander García
Published: January 2024

Written by Alexander García Düttmann, this piece was chosen by the author for inclusion in this volume out of a sense of the philosophical closeness of both Düttmann and Nancy to Derrida, and their shared sense of his absence. All three have occupied the same amicable space, where deconstruction avoids becoming preoccupied with itself, where visibility, vision, the act of drawing and the instant of thinking are exposed and shared.
Gothic Thing Theory
Authors: Weinstock Jeffrey Andrew
Published: January 2024

This chapter highlights the overwhelming insistence of Gothic tropes across twenty-first-century critical and cultural theory in general. The prevailing structure of feeling of the twenty-first century may be described as Anthropocenic anxiety as both critical discourse and popular culture draw repeatedly upon the Gothic as a means through which to express concerns about human impotence, hubris, and our future disappearance. In the critical literature, particularly that group of approaches categorized as the “nonhuman turn” including Latourean actor-network theory, affect theory, animal studies, New Materialism, and Speculative Realism, Gothic figures and tropes abound as humans become things, things acquire uncanny animacy, and we brush shoulders with Lovecraftian monsters, serial killers, zombies, and other weird creatures. In popular culture, Anthropocenic anxiety is expressed more directly through Gothic narratives of human decentering and apocalypse. This is particularly evident when considering the mainstreaming of speculative literature and media featuring narratives in which human autonomy and presumptions of mastery are challenged or the human race is threatened with extinction. Three master tropes of Gothicized discourse have proliferated across contemporary theoretical paradigms that together express a twenty-first-century structure of feeling undergirded by anxiety over the fate of the human: spectrality, monstrosity, and apocalypse.
Dark Enchantment and Gothic Materialism
Authors: Weinstock Jeffrey Andrew
Published: January 2024

This chapter first proposes, using language indebted to Jane Bennett, Ian Bogost, and Michael Saler, that the allure of the Gothic and the fascination it provokes inheres at least in part in its staging of a peculiar sort of enchanted world—in particular, a world in which the line between subject and object becomes muddled and obscured. The milieu of the Gothic narrative is one of animate objects—of things that acquire mystery, depth, and often life of a sort—and of de-animated subjects, people who are treated like or become things. It then extends on this premise by exploring how objects in general acquire “Gothic thing-power” through a consideration of cursed things, objects as conduits, and “inspirited things.” The chapter concludes with close attention to ominous matter in David Lynch and in Stephen King’s novel Needful Things.
Body-as-Thing
Authors: Weinstock Jeffrey Andrew
Published: January 2024

This chapter argues that the Gothic thing par excellence is the human body, which is produced as uncanny Gothic object through an inversion of animacy in which, on the one hand, the body is reduced to the status of a thing and, on the other, the thing-as-body is endowed with uncanny life. The first category, body-as-thing, which is addressed in this chapter, consists of narratives in which human bodies are treated as assemblages of pieces, tools, vessels, and “meat”—that is, the body is foregrounded as matter and given no special ontological status in the “democracy of objects”; it is simply an object existing with other objects, often to be utilized without particular care or sensitivity. This is the realm of mad scientists, serial killers, and cannibals, and these narratives are generally framed in such a way that readers and audiences are asked to reject the equation of body = object among other objects. Primary texts addressed in this chapter include Edgar Allan Poe’s “Berenice” and Clive Barker’s “The Midnight Meat Train.”
Thing-as-Body
Authors: Weinstock Jeffrey Andrew
Published: January 2024

This chapter, “Thing-as-Body,” works in concert with the preceding chapter, “Body-as-Thing.” The category addressed here, thing-as-body endowed with uncanny life, includes animate corpses and body parts, as well as animate dolls, puppets, mannequins, statutes, robots, idols, masks, portraits, photographs, reflections, and other representations of the human form that not only challenge understandings of the line between living and dead, but frequently seem more alive than the human beings who encounter them. Put differently, representations of the body-as-thing endowed with uncanny life often stage inversions in which the inanimate thing assumes life at the expense of the living thing, which is frozen or vitiated. Both types of inversion within Gothic narrative—body-as-thing and thing-as-body come to life—evoke negative affect from characters as well as audiences because they are invested with dread about the fragility of the body, emphasize the abject, and undo human exceptionalism in troubling ways. The affective dread elicited by such scenarios in these ways underscores the dark side to Thing Theory and the constellation of approaches grouped under the rubric of the nonhuman turn as narratives involving Gothic bodies foreground just how difficult—and possibly dangerous—it is to construe human bodies as objects among other objects.
Epilogue
Authors: Weinstock Jeffrey Andrew
Published: January 2024

This short concluding chapter reasserts the study’s thesis and argues that the Gothic’s insistent thematization of thing-power not only helps to explain its appeal but is a significant part of its profundity: The Gothic is a philosophical meditation on the human relation to nonhuman. It has enacted the “nonhuman turn” since its inception and raises significant questions about the extent to which we can counter anthropocentrism in the quest to live more harmoniously with our environment.
Startling Figures
Authors: O'Connell Michael
Published: January 2024

This is a book about Catholic fiction in a secular age and the rhetorical strategies Catholic writers employ to reach a sceptical, indifferent, or even hostile audience. Although characters in contemporary Catholic fiction frequently struggle with doubt and fear, these works retain a belief in the possibility for transcendent meaning and value beyond the limits of the purely secular. Individual chapters include close readings of some of the best works of contemporary American Catholic fiction and shed light on the narrative techniques that Catholic writers use to point their characters, and their readers, beyond the horizon of secularity and toward an idea of transcendence. This book is focused both on the aspects of craft that Catholic writers employ to shape the reader’s experience of the story and also the effect the story has on the reader, and one recurring theme is how often Catholic writers use narrative violence and other, similar, disorienting techniques in order to unsettle the reader. These moments can leave both characters within the stories and the readers themselves shaken and unmoored, and this, this book argues, is often a first step toward the recognition, and even possibly the acceptance, of grace. Individual chapters look at these themes in the works of Flannery O’Connor, J. F. Powers, Walker Percy, Tim Gautreaux, Alice McDermott, George Saunders, Phil Klay, and Kirstin Valdez Quade.
The “Blasting Annihilating Light” of Flannery O’Connor’s Art
Authors: O'Connell Michael
Published: January 2024

This exploration of the surprising and disorienting nature of Catholic literature opens by looking at the use of violence in Flannery O’Connor’s fiction. The first section of this chapter looks to her letters and essays to illuminate her own explanations and justifications for the violence in her work, and then the chapter turns to a close reading of her early masterpiece “A Good Man is Hard to Find” to demonstrate how the violence functions in a typical O’Connor short story, both on the characters of the grandmother and the Misfit, and also on the reader. The chapter closes with a discussion of Wise Blood, arguing that in the character of Mrs. Flood O’Connor has provided us with a reader surrogate, whose experience of witnessing violence acts as a catalyst to re-evaluation of her mundane worldview.
Tim Gautreaux and a Postconciliar Approach to Violence
Authors: O'Connell Michael
Published: January 2024

This chapter looks at the work of Tim Gautreaux, whose fiction is heavily influenced by both Percy and O’Connor. His stories use violence to change characters and readers, but in a way that emphasizes postconciliar Catholic thinking, particularly in their emphasis on the significance of community and in his prioritization of the importance of social action. The chapter begins by tracing out how violence leads to transformation in his first novel, The Next Step in the Dance, and then shows how an early short story, “Same Place, Same Things,” undermines this pattern. From there, the chapter examines two novels, The Clearing and The Missing, showing how in these works he is focused on unpacking the myth of redemptive violence and moving characters and readers toward an appreciation for the path of nonviolence.
Belief and Ambiguity in the Fiction of Alice McDermott
Authors: O'Connell Michael
Published: January 2024

Chapter 5 shows how Alice McDermott’s fiction reflects the ways in which Catholic faith and culture help give shape and structure to the routines of domestic life and the various ways that people try to make sense of suffering and the reality of death. The chapter begins by positioning her work in the broader narratives surrounding postsecular fiction and the state of contemporary Catholic literature, and then looks closely at a number of novels, particularly Charming Billy, Someone, and The Ninth Hour, demonstrating that her work poses hard questions about the adequacy of faith in the modern, skeptical age, while still making space for the presence of mystery and the transformative reality of grace.
“Life Is Rough and Death Is Coming”: George Saunders and the Catholic Literary Tradition
Authors: O'Connell Michael
Published: January 2024

George Saunders is not often discussed as a Catholic writer, but this chapter opens with a close examination of his interviews that demonstrates why this is a mistake. From there, we move to an examination of the confessional urge that is central to Lincoln in the Bardo, and then the chapter draws connections between Saunders’s work and that of O’Connor, Percy, and Powers. In each case, we see how he uses moments of violence and trauma as a way to disorient both characters and the reader. This is done primarily through close readings of three stories: “The Falls,” “CommComm,” and “Tenth of December.” Like O’Connor, Saunders makes broad and persuasive claims for the power of fiction to affect the reader, and perhaps no writer since O’Connor has been able to use humor and violence in such perfect balance to achieve these ends.
Introduction
Authors: Gana Nouri
Published: January 2024

Taking its cue from the suicides of Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010 and Khalil Hawi three decades earlier, the introduction lays out the broad strokes of the melancholy disposition at work in Arab contemporaneity from the Nakba to the Naksa to the Arab Spring. It reads critically the melancholizing proclivities of a number of Arab thinkers from George Tarabishi to Karima Lazali through Malek Bennani. Inversely, it discerns the melancholicizing urgencies latent in the writings of Franz Fanon and reads them in tandem with Ghassan Kanafani’s epistlery cri de coeur “Letter from Gaza.” In the meanwhile, and by way of a critical engagement with Slavoj Žižek’s assault on postcolonial affect, it contrasts the Euro-American consumerist and colonial uses of melancholy to the decolonial tasks it is called upon to accomplish in the geopolitical context of the Middle East and North Africa.
Melancholy Formations
Authors: Gana Nouri
Published: January 2024

The aim of this inaugural chapter is to demonstrate the extent to which political and military defeats have spawned a psychoaffective disposition toward melancholy, and become the recurring site of creative and critical inquiry, exacerbated even further by a predominant sense of unstoppable technoeconomic belatedness and existential precarity. The chapter embarks on a series of analyses of an eclectic number of plays, novels, poems, films, and cites short critical statements and dictums and at times even aphorisms that best dramatize the cultural, political, and discursive gamut of the collective disposition toward melancholy. In the meanwhile, what becomes clear is that Arab subjectivity is unthinkable outside the collusion/collision between local authoritarianism and Euro-American imperialism. The melancholy turn of Arab subjectivity accompanies its commitment to the transformative project of liberation. From Nouri Bouzid and Chokri Mabkhout to Ghassan Kanafani and Annemarie Jacir through Youssef Chahine and Sonallah Ibrahim, the liberation of the individual emerges as one of the most urgent conditions of national liberation. In the end, the chapter fleshes out the notion of “melancholy acts” through sustained reflections on the question of iltizām or commitment in the aftermath of the ongoing Nakba and Naksa.
Melancholy Manhood
Authors: Gana Nouri
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on the psychodynamics of modernity and traditionalism in the aftermath of French colonialism in Tunisia. Habib Bourguiba’s rule (1956–1987) produced a breed of men that might be aptly called Bourguiba’s sons. Suspended in a state of mutability that is simultaneously cultivated and frustrated, they have been able neither to come to terms with the challenges of modernity, of which gender equality is part and parcel, nor to relinquish fully the protective shelter of traditional patriarchy, in which male supremacy is the grantor of psychosocial stability. Postcolonial films by Moufida Tlatli, Nadia Fares, Férid Boughedir, and Nouri Bouzid draw a markedly melancholy portrait of manhood. The challenges of modernity have come to cast a grim shadow on the traditional dimensions of manhood, masculinity, and sexuality. Melancholy manhood is born when a loss or crisis of old conceptions of manhood has taken place but has not been accompanied with the parallel and adequate psychosocial and hermeneutic readjustment necessary for its resolution.
Melancholy Ends
Authors: Gana Nouri
Published: January 2024

This chapter starts by exploring the aporias and dilemmas of representation that Arab writers and artists confront at a time when the Arab world has become overly mediatized and ideologically territorialized as a zone of sectarian violence and death. For all the reports on Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, the Arab world suffers from what might be called a collapse of witnessing. The chapter focuses mainly on the controversies over the humanization of terrorism in Hany Abu-Assad’s film Paradise Now (al-jannah-tul-ān) and demonstrates the ways in which the film grapples with the construction of a narrative of terrorism that cannot be pre-discursively (and on licensed grounds) discredited as a justification of terror. Cognizant of suicide protest as a melancholy act par excellence, the film invests in a minimalist aesthetics of failure (“camera failure”) and prolonged close-up scenes as well as in comic relief in order to reclaim and stage the right to narrate the tragedy of Palestine and to challenge the racial and geopolitical differentials on the grounds of which humanity is constructed, valued, allocated, or withheld.
Melancholy Islam
Authors: Gana Nouri
Published: January 2024

The final chapter seeks to understand the psychodynamics of suicidal protest at the crossroads of postcolonialism, Islamism, and psychoanalysis with a particular focus on the work of Tunisian psychoanalyst Fethi Benslama. For George Tarabishi, because Arabs have been stripped of their subjectivity, they were forced to find shelter in tradition; similarly, for Benslama the fantasy of return to origins that marks the Islamist project is spurred by the impasses of subjectivity brought about by the end of the Islamic caliphate.
This chapter examines how Benslama makes use of Lacanian vocabulary in order to deconstruct the myth of origin in Islam and the melancholite economy of jouissance that sustains it. There is a tendency in Benslama, however, to reduce what is historical to what is structural or endemic to Muslim societies; the effect is at times more demystifying than illuminating. The chapter engages with Benslama’s alternatives to the Muslim impasses of subjectivity and concludes by taking Benslama’s own construction of a female Muslim itinerary of Islamic history as a salutary example of non-violent melancholic critique that the book has tried to account for throughout the different literary and cultural examples discussed. Women, according to Benslama, are the unacknowledged midwives of monotheistic and Islamic origin par excellence.
Epilogue
Authors: Gana Nouri
Published: January 2024

The epilogue builds on Benslama’s pathologizing view of melancholy in order, first, to expose his sanctioned displacements of historical reality into the structural determinacies of religion and language and, second, to further situate melancholy in a spectrum of psychopolitical differentials that range from melancholy pride to melancholy critique.
Labor Power and Amandla
Authors: Cousins Thomas
Published: January 2024

The chapter examines the meanings of “power” that animate concern with “labor power” from the point of view of the laboring body and its capacity to work. Descriptively, the chapter focuses on the working day, the measurements that produce a population of laborers, the nutrition intervention, and the concern with capacity that animates the calculation of calories and profits. What emerges is not simply “power over” or the operation of governmentality in the production and extraction of value, though certainly these are key concerns; rather, the chapter shows how the various “capacities” at stake in the plantations entail particular modes of subjectivation in the disciplining of outsourced labor, the care for and of team members, the effort to sustain extended networks of dependents, and the navigation of obligations that present themselves in everyday life, each of which is required to endure the demands of the plantation. The chapter shows how the rhythms, coordinations, and improvisations required of bodies and relations in the plantations locate amandla deep within the folds of flesh and language. It is this folded relation between labor power and amandla that emerges as a singular index of histories of exploitation, abstraction, and repair.
Conclusion
Authors: Cousins Thomas
Published: January 2024

The chapter revisits the tensions between Marxian and Arendtian notions of work, labor, and action, especially in relation to South African debates about the disappearance of work and the figure of the worker as central to a politics of social welfare. In threading together the various descriptions of the work of repair across the book, the conclusion returns to the difficulty of thinking “the otherwise” from within the projects of postapartheid late liberalism. The grammar of the plantation puts into question available concepts of labor power, capacity, and action, by forcing us to reconsider how anthropology as a discipline understands the relationship between concept, word, and world. The book ends by returning to repair, capacity, and work as uncertain, vulnerable terms with which to imagine an incomplete becoming with others as a certain political and ethical project.
Introduction: Child’s Play
Authors: Smith Vanessa
Published: January 2024

A recurrent scene, hidden in plain sight in nineteenth-century texts, is that of the enraged child damaging its toys: venting the kinds of violent or distressed childish feeling we usually allocate to post-psychoanalytic modernity. It’s hard to square their presence with dominant accounts of nineteenth-century childhood as a repository of innocence, source of exploited labor, or post-Romantic touchstone of moral clarity, or of the nineteenth-century toy as an educative instrument in the arsenal of an increasingly secured bourgeois domesticity. The introduction proposes that two analysts who were themselves nineteenth-century children, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, can help us to grasp what is happening in such scenes, and in turn what they mean for genre, and in particular for the novel. It presents a detailed exegesis of the work of and disagreement between these two psychoanalysts and takes issue with their displacement in recent object-relations focused literary criticism. It outlines questions that their methods pose for both the nineteenth-century novel and for critical approaches to the novel.
Bildung Blocks
Authors: Smith Vanessa
Published: January 2024

This chapter foregrounds violent play as fundamental to the representation of childhood within the Bildungsroman. It argues that the Bildungsroman’s toy stories encapsulate a counter-imperative of regression working against its developmental propulsion: one that exposes the thesis of the novel’s maturation—from sentiment to realism, from the depiction of flat to rounded character, from the picaresque to the Bildungsroman—as comparably marked by formal reversion and compromised interiority. It focuses on two female Bildungsromane: Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. The first-person narrative of Lucy Snowe, the most intransigent of Brontë’s “little, poor and plain” heroines, is understood here not as a record of traumatized affect, but as a tale of Kleinian envy, wrought in a character landscape that is as much toy-world as the achieved realism to which Brontë claimed to aspire. Maggie Tulliver’s “grinding and beating” of her broken wooden doll in Dorlcote Mill’s attic is recast as a toy model for understanding the larger scale and insistent ways in which undercurrents of rage and remorse damage beloved objects in this backward-glancing Bildungsroman.
Religious Anthropological Analysis of Unnatural Rituals: An Example from Northeastern Shamanic Culture
Authors: Hu Kehan
Published: January 2024

This paper discusses and introduces shamanic culture in Northeast China First, this article will show the steps and equipment used in common shamanic rituals, and introduce what shamanic worship is and its influence in Northeast China. It will also analyze the scientific principles of natural rituals as they manifest therein. This article will also explain why it is effective in some cases, why this ritual is not a substitute for formal medical care and the influence of shamanic culture on modern culture in Northeast China. Finally, this article will discuss how to preserve and pass on the positive cultural influences of shamanic rituals and discard the cultural influences that come with them.
Analysis of U.S. Response to Frequent Sanctions Against ChinaInternational Law Dimension
Authors: Ding Yujie
Published: January 2024

Since the global outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2019, the development of various countries has been affected and global economic growth has been sluggish. At the same time, economic friction between the major powers has continued, and there has been a rise in Western trade protectionism and hegemony. Western capitalist countries, represented by the United States, have imposed economic sanctions on China in an attempt to curb China's development, but there is currently a lack of an effective system of rules at the international level to regulate this phenomenon. Therefore, this paper analyzes the economic sanctions imposed by the United States on our country, based on the current legal system of our country, and in the process of comparing and learning from the advanced experience of other countries, it explores how our country should accelerate the improvement of the anti-sanctions legal system, to improve the level of judicial countermeasures effectively, and to set up legal barriers to curb the negative impact of foreign economic sanctions on our country.
Research on the Origin and Evolution of Hu Jia
Authors: Li Jiaxin
Published: January 2024

The Silk Road originated from the Western Han Dynasty. The word Silk indicates that it was originally a trade route, which eventually developed into a bridge for economic, cultural, and artistic exchanges between the East and the West. It connected Central Asia, West Asia, and countries around the Mediterranean, allowing different countries and different styles of music and dance to collide, promoting music exchanges and development in the surrounding countries along the Silk Road. As for the introduction of musical instruments and music into the Central Plains, the Silk Road has undoubtedly had a positive impact on the development of Chinese music. It can be said to be a music canal that runs through the East and the West. Jia, with its mournful sound, is originally a musical instrument played by the Hu people. The wooden Hu Jia of the Han Dynasty was introduced to the Central Plains by Zhang Qian's expedition to the Western Regions, while the reed Hu Jia was popular in Mongolian ethnic regions. This ancient ethnic musical instrument has almost disappeared and has gone through a legendary journey. Its structure and changes are of great research value. This paper uses methods of literature analysis and case analysis to study the playing techniques of Hu Jia and its evolution from the Western Han Dynasty to the present. Through the argumentation in this paper, it is discovered that the three-hole Hu Jia used in the Xinjiang Altay region in 1985 was still the same as those used in the Western Jin Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, indicating that Hu Jia has not been lost.
Evaluation of the Chilean National Orthopaedic Examination Over 11 Years: Progress and Outcomes of National and International Examinees
Authors: Lira María Jesús , Besa Pablo , Irarrázaval Sebastián , Ruz Cristian , Walbaum Cristóbal , Montecinos Carla , Amenábar Diego , Orrego Mario
Published: January 2024

Introduction:

The National Orthopaedics Examination (EMNOT) was initially designed for Chilean orthopaedic program graduates and is now a crucial component of the revalidation process for international orthopaedic surgeons seeking practice in Chile. This study aims to describe participation and performance of EMNOT examinees based on their origin and to analyze the difficulty and discrimination indexes during its first 11 years of implementation.

Methods:

A retrospective assessment was conducted on all EMNOT results from 2009 to 2019. The study evaluated the participation and performance of examinees according to their origin and examined the difficulty and discrimination indexes of the examination.

Results:

A total of 975 examinees were evaluated, with 41.23% from national resident programs (National Medical Graduates) and 58.77% from international examinees (International Medical Graduates). The number of participating universities increased from 4 in 2009 to 17 in 2019. National Medical Graduates examinees achieved a mean score of 66.52 ± 8.67 (0 to 100 points) while International Medical Graduates examinees scored 55.13 ± 11.42 (P < 0.001). The difficulty and discrimination indexes remained adequate throughout this period.

Discussion:

Over the course of 11 years, the number of EMNOT examinees exhibited notable growth. The examination effectively differentiates between candidates based on their origin and maintains appropriate levels of difficulty and discrimination.
Unplanned Sarcoma Excisions: Understanding How They Happen
Authors: Belzarena Ana Cecilia , Binitie Odion , Letson George Douglas , Joyce David Michael
Published: January 2024

Background:

Soft-tissue sarcomas present as a mass with nonspecific symptoms, and unplanned excisions commonly occur. The purpose of this study was to analyze the incidence of unplanned excisions performed by orthopaedic surgeons and to conduct a root cause analysis (RCA) of the steps that led to unplanned excisions in all the cases.

Methods:

A retrospective case-control study was conducted. Two cohorts were identified, one including patients who underwent an unplanned excision of a soft-tissue sarcoma (n = 107) and a second cohort with patients whose entire care was performed at our sarcoma center (n = 102). A RCA was conducted with the whole sample to identify the preventable causes that led to sarcoma unplanned excisions.

Results:

Orthopedic surgeons were the second group of physicians to perform the most unplanned excisions, only behind general surgeons. Inadequate imaging was encountered in 76.6% of the patients (n = 82, 95% confidence interval, 67.8 to 83.6). Forty-five patients (42.1%) had no imaging studies before the unplanned procedure. In the RCA, the most notable obstacles found were (1) incorrect assumption of a benign diagnosis, (2) failure to obtain the appropriate imaging study, (3) incorrectly reported imaging studies, (4) failure to order a biopsy, and (5) incorrect reporting of the biopsy.

Conclusions:

Despite educational efforts, unplanned excisions and the devastating consequences that sometimes follow continue to occur. Orthopaedic surgeons persist in playing a role in the unplanned procedure burden.
Evaluasi Kurikulum sebagai Kerangka Acuan Pengembangan Pendidikan Islam
Authors: Adnan Mohammad
Published: January 2024

Evaluation in an action or process to decide value of something. The curriculum is a subsystem in education cannot be separated from the dynamics process in the society. The curriculum therefore, should be organized to prepare learners in facing the future obstacles. This article discusses the importance of curriculum evaluation in some aspects and giving the construction of understanding for all parties involved in education that the curriculum evaluation becomes reference frame of Islamic education as it is very important in the globalization era, such aspects as curriculum evaluation, and curriculum development, types of evaluation strategies, curriculum evaluation models. Therefore, this curriculum evaluation can be used as a measurement or be used as a fundamental reference by institutions, especially Islamic education.
In Vivo antidiarrheal effect and phytochemical characterization of Plectranthus barbatus Andrews
Authors: Piero Mathew , Ajwang Emmah , Omwenga George , Muruthi Carolyn
Published: January 2024

Diarrheal infections remain a public health problem. The mainstays of pharmacological therapy for infectious diarrhea include probiotics, antibacterial, and intestinal adsorbents. Nevertheless, these clinical treatments are not devoid of shortcomings including prohibitive costs and adverse effects. Medicinal plants including Plectranthus barbatus(P. barbatus) have folkloric remedies against diarrhea. However, there is paucity of knowledge to scientifically validate the efficacy of P. barbatus on diarrheal infections. This study was undertaken to ascertain antidiarrheal efficacy, bioactive composition, and toxicity profiles of P. barbatus extracts. Antidiarrheal activity and acute toxicity were carried out on Swiss albino mice. Quantitative phytocompound analysis was evaluated using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry(LCMS). Results indicated that P. barbatus extract has antidiarrheal activity whereby it prolonged the start of diarrhea, causing a decline in the occurrence of wet feces and intestinal transit significantly. Additionally, the extract reduced the accumulation of intraluminal fluid resulting in the decrease in distension, intestinal overload, and water content in the fecal drops. Acute toxicity assay on mice showed that P. barbatus extract was non-toxic at the dosage level of 2000mg/kgbw(milligram/kilogram body weight). LCMS analysis detected presence of phytocompounds associated with antidiarrheal effects including forskolin, gallic, kaempferol, and quercetin. Findings from the current study offer a scientific validation for the folkloric utilization of P. barbatus in the management of diarrhea.
Characterisation of Phenolics to comprehend ‘Gunantaradhana (Qualitative transformation)’ of Madhu (Honey) with special reference to Gallic and Tannic acid components
Authors: Kumar Sandhya , Pai Satish
Published: January 2024

Background: Madhu (honey) has been used as a remedy for diseases such as Prameha (diabetes). Medoroga (dyslipidaemia) and Sthoulya (obesity) are rooted in the principle of "Yogavahitva” or synergism. Kaiyadeva Nighantu speculates on honey's potential after Samskara or processing to obtain specific outcomes. Differences in activities of Madhu mixed and processed with Triphala Kashaya are attributed to polyphenols, among which, Tannic and Gallic acids are significant. Objective: The present study is aimed at identifying Phenolic components in Madhu in the form of Samyoga and Samskara with Triphala Kashaya and quantification of Gallic and Tannic acid through LC-MS/MS. Materials and Methods: Honey was procured from its natural habitat and stored for 1 year. Four samples were prepared and subjected to total phenolic estimation using UV Spectrophotometry and characterisation and quantification through LC-MS/MS. Results: Total phenolic content was BDL in unprocessed Madhu. Triphala Kashaya got 52% higher Tannic acid than Gallic acid content. Gallic acid was reduced by 32% and Tannic acid by 73% in sample 3 (mixing with unprocessed honey) as compared to Triphala Kashaya. In Samskarita Madhu (processed with Triphala Kashaya), Gallic acid was increased by 33.14% and Tannic acid by 19% as compared to Samyoga (sample 3). Conclusion: Triphala Kashaya contains a higher concentration of Tannic acid but it is greatly reduced in Triphala Kashaya Mishra Madhu. However, the concentration of Gallic acid is less affected. Tannic acid has an affinity towards sugar molecules thus reducing its concentration due to the formation of transient bonds. The majority of compounds in the samples remain unidentified, which may contribute to the diverse pharmacological activities.
A partial review of the edible plant(s) from wetlands of Manipur for medicinal values and industrial utility in the context of food
Authors: Singh A
Published: January 2024

Background: Manipur, one of the Northeastern states of India, is well known for its rich biodiversity and other inhabitant such as art and cultures, its tribes, and also the food habits. Wetlands and their rich bio-resources play a crucial role in nature. In the context of Manipur society, its service is tremendous and non-substitutable. Manipur has 19 wetlands and all together, the state covers 529 km2 areas under wetlands and is mainly located in lowland areas. There is consideration of the wetland as the prominent and promising source of livelihood for sustainable societies and also the plant that plays a significant role in the socio-economic of the state. Trapa natans (Heikak), Euyale ferox (Thangjing), root of Nelumbo nucifera (Thambou), young leaves of N. nucifera (Thamna khenjong), fruits of N. nucifera (Thamchet), Sagittaria sagittifolia (Koukha), Nymphaea species fruit (Thembung), etc. are regularly consumed food items.
Objective: The objective of the study was to understand and analyse the traditional knowledge and practices of people in the wetlands of Manipur. Materials and Methods: Different types of plant(s) from wetlands are partially reviewed in this part of the investigation. A literature survey and interaction location-wise had been done. Further, the study includes a survey of the efficacy of food items as medicines. The collected data were analysed for proper documentation and validation. Results: In this review, the traditional practices of using plants as medicines are also presented. As per analysis, traditional knowledge and practices are in a dangerous state, and soon to be disappearing. The significance of local food items from wetlands is not well known, so documentation is needed and must. People are not aware of and interested in carrying out such traditional food habits. Conclusion: Consequently, this revision may reflect light on the value of preserving the wetlands of Manipur for maintaining the ultimate reservoir of food that acts as medicine, and this will support in establishment of industries at large scale for different applications.
The profound significance of Subtle Anatomy in Ayurveda - A comprehensive exploration
Authors: Soni Gaurav
Published: January 2024

Background: Ayurveda, the Indian system of medicine, has long highlighted the harmony of the body, mind, and spirit. Subtle anatomy deals with the perceptive of the energetic facets of the human being. Unlike gross anatomy, which deals with the structural organisation, subtle anatomy delves into the further insubstantial magnitude of subsistence. Fundamentals of subtle anatomy include Nadi (Energy channels), Prana (Life force), Chakra (Energy centres), Kosha (Sheaths) & Oja (Nectar/essence of body tissues). The subtler dimensions of the Ayurvedic anatomy remain under explored and critical to overall health. Objective: To explicate the perception of subtle anatomy in Ayurveda and delineate its role in integrative health approach. Materials and Methods: An all-inclusive appraisal and analysis was done on various concepts of subtle anatomy in Ayurveda and Yoga philosophy, including classical compendiums like Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita. A review of contemporary literature along with journal articles, and online information related to the topic was also considered. Textual inputs from various other traditional approaches were also searched thoroughly and analysed. Results: The positive outcomes of various studies conducted worldwide give an essence of the benefits of an integrative approach of healing with subtle anatomical entities and contemporary medicine. Not only psychological disorders but also physical disorders like diabetic foot etc. have been recovered more efficiently via a subtle energy approach. Conclusion: Immense portrayal of subtle energies and their implication are described in Ayurveda and contemporary texts. The holistic approach of Ayurveda cannot be achieved without understanding its subtle anatomical entities with practical value. The exploration revealed the indispensable importance of subtle anatomy, providing an insight into its relations with physiological processes, psychological health, spiritual balance and overall, well-being.
Herpetofauna of forest fragments within the Agata Mining Ventures Incorporated (AMVI), Agusan del Norte, Caraga Region, Philippines
Authors: Rosales Apple , Suhian John Patrick , Gamalinda Eve , Paz Sherryl , Solania-Naling Chennie
Published: January 2024

The Philippines holds an extraordinary record of amphibian and reptile diversity and endemism; however, factors like habitat loss and fragmentation that may result from activities related to resource extraction, such as mining, pose a significant threat to their conservation. This study examined the herpetofauna composition in select forest fragments within one of the important mining sites in Caraga, the Agata Mining Ventures Incorporated, between 2018 and 2021. Standardized time searches along the established two 2km transects in two sampling stations (Lawigan and Tinigabasan) were conducted to record reptiles and amphibians accounting for 880 man-hours. A total of 513 individuals representing 12 species of amphibians, and 17 species of reptiles were recorded in the area in both surveys. Of these species, 62% (n = 18 spp.) are Philippine endemic, 35% (n = 10 spp.) native, and 3% (n = 1 spp.) were invasive alien species. Overall, the Shannon-Weiner diversity index is high (H’=2.52) and varied significantly across survey periods (Mann-Whitney U test = 248.5, p=0.007). The species-area relationship analysis showed a strong positive correlation for total herpetofauna (R2 = 0.98), amphibians (R2 = 0.87), and reptiles (R2 = 0.99), and a significant correlation existed between reptiles and forest area (p = 0.05). The result suggests a strong reliance of herpetofaunal richness to forested area. Combined forest clearing and the effects of mining activities currently happening in the area might threaten these environment-sensitive taxa. Preserving these forest fragments within AMVI and allocating buffer zones is highly recommended. Periodic scientific field-based surveys and re-surveys, encompassing not only amphibians and reptiles but also various other species are recommended to monitor species distributions, population trends and impacts of on-going activities. These efforts aim to update data-driven sources supporting the mining area’s rehabilitation program, thereby contributing to societal and environmental benefits.
Modern Developments in the Growing of Medicinal Plants
Authors:   Pravara Rural College of Pharmacy, Loni, India, Ahire Manish , Indrekar Aakash ,   Pravara Rural College of Pharmacy, Loni, India, Kate Komal ,   Pravara Rural College of Pharmacy, Loni, India, bhande Jyoti ,   Pravara Rural College of Pharmacy, Loni, India, Vikhe Dattaprasad ,   Pravara Rural College of Pharmacy, Loni, India
Published: January 2024

Nature has provided us with improved settings throughout thousands of years to promote the growth of medicinal plants. Plants have been used as medicines since ancient times because people thought they were safe and beneficial to human health. For their main healthcare requirements, 80% of the world’s population still mostly uses alternative medicine systems. Several kinds of secondary metabolites, also known as bioactive plant elements, are found in plants and give them their medical value in nature. Scientific agriculture uses technological features to generate secondary metabolites from medicinal plants, but simple methods must be used for their growth, collection, and preservation. The phytochemicals that play a significant part in the pharmacological activities of medicinal and aromatic plants include alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, resins, volatile oils, and other bioactive phytochemicals. The physical environment, which includes sunlight, temperature, rainfall, and soil type, significantly affects how medicinal plants grow and develop as well as the secondary metabolites that emerge from those processes. Biotechnological approaches are being used to improve output and potency of medicinal plants, such as tissue culture, micropropagation, synthetic seed technologies, and methods based on molecular markers. This article also provides a description of the many advanced technologies currently being used in agriculture.