Healing Disorders: Reparative Narratives in Aby Warburg and Tsitsi Dangarembga

Abstract

This essay critically analyzes the notions of healing and repair through the lens of assimilation and in-between space, drawing on postcolonial thought, particularly Frantz Fanon, and feminist body theory. It compares two cases: Aby Warburg’s 1923 lecture on the Serpent Ritual and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions . In Warburg, healing is enacted through the externalization of conflict onto a “primitive” elsewhere, challenging the concept of Denkraum , which appears non-systematically across his work. In Nervous Conditions , Nyasha’s eating disorders emerge as embodied expressions of resistance and alienation within colonial and gendered hierarchies, inhabiting a liminal space where assimilation, protest, and self-destruction coexist. While Warburg emphasizes externalization and the possibility of symbolic reconstruction, Dangarembga foregrounds the impossibility of repair under systemic violence. By juxtaposing these cases, the essay explores the contradictions and possibilities that arise when healing is understood as a liminal, intersubjective process – one that is never fully resolved, always negotiated, and deeply shaped by historical, cultural, and social contexts.