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Sep 11, 2014
Medicine and the Saints
Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956
Summary
"France" does not appear in the title of Ellen Amster's new book, Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press, 2013). But in its pursuit of a set of medical encounters in colonial Morocco, this is a book that is all about the meeting of France and Frenchness with "Other" ideas about the body and its various states of being, living, and suffering. Approaching the history of French colonialism in Morocco as a series of deep connections between bodies and the body politic, Medicine and the Saints offers readers tremendous insight on the ways that Moroccans and their French colonizers borrowed from and clashed with one another when it came to their understandings of science, physical and spiritual health, and the complexities of interactions between patients, healers, families, and citizens.
Treating the body as an archive, the book draws on an impressive range of documents and perspectives, in both Arabic and French. It also makes use of an extremely rich set of interviews that the author conducted with contemporary Moroccans between 1995 and 2000. The book reminds us that the French "civilizing mission" was often framed in scientific and medical terms and that the nationalisms and modernities that have emerged in Morocco (and indeed throughout the Islamic world) have been forged in complex relationship with a specifically French positivism that understands bodies and politics in particular ways. Medicine and the Saints is a fascinating, visceral history with profound implications for present day medical beliefs, practices, systems, and experiences within and beyond Morocco's borders.
Your Host
Roxanne Panchasi
Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013.
