Towards reconstructing Africa: Recuperation and responsibility in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers

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 the functional conception art. In this article we examine multiple dimensions to recuperation within context reconstruction Africa, continental search for utopia, responsibility that places on Africans. Using communitarian perspectives health as a guide, identify six interlocking subsets healing, re-creation, renascence, repossession, recall, Sankofa (return). Informed by Molefi Kete Asante’s construct agency injunctions readers, establish permeating each these building blocks Africans operationalize leitmotif novel. As helpers, visionaries, custodians vital traditional knowledge skills, healers facilitate sharing information past future against background British domination. We also show Armah deliberately gives novel polysemic title transcend spatial, cultural, epistemic limitations imposed continent order. conclude social orientation creative configuration work are consistent with diverse intermingling meanings recuperation.