Towards reconstructing Africa: Recuperation and responsibility in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers
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Tydskrif vir Letterkunde
Abstract
A product of Africa’s pre-colonial and colonial history, Ayi Kwei Armah’s fifth novel, The Healers (1978), is steeped in an African communalistic worldview
and the functional conception of art. In this article, we examine the multiple dimensions to recuperation within the context of the reconstruction of
Africa, the continental search for utopia, and the responsibility that this places on Africans. Using Armah’s communitarian perspectives on health as
As a guide, we identify six interlocking subsets of recuperation: healing, re-creation, renascence, repossession, recall, and Sankofa (return). Informed
by Molefi Kete Asante’s construct of agency and Armah’s communalistic injunctions to readers, we establish that permeating each of these building
blocks is the responsibility of Africans to operationalize the reconstruction of Africa, the leitmotif of the novel. As helpers, visionaries, and custodians
of vital traditional knowledge and skills, the healers facilitate the sharing of information on Africa’s past and future against the background of British
colonial domination. We also show that Armah deliberately gives the novel this polysemic title to transcend the spatial, cultural, and epistemic
limitations imposed on the continent by the colonial order. We conclude that the social orientation and creative configuration of health in the work
are consistent with the diverse and intermingling meanings of recuperation
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Research Article