Bard College Berlin News
Dr. Clio Nicastro publishes two essays in Open Philosophy and Engramma. La tradizione classica nella cultura occidentale
The essay “Healing Disorders” was published in the special issue “At the Limits of Narrative Reparation,” edited by Silvia Pierosara and Sergio Labate and published open access by Open Philosophy. The special issue is one of the outcomes of the research project “Restorative Narratives” (STORIES) at the University of Macerata (Italy), which Nicastro is a part of.
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.
The essay “Soldiers of Lights” was published in the online journal Engramma. La tradizione classica nella cultura occidentale. The issue nr. 233, edited by Jacopo Galimberti, Margherita Picciché, Ivan Pintor, Giulia Zanon, is dedicated to "The Political Iconology of Right-Wing Culture", focussing on the ways in which the contemporary Far Right, lacking a genuinely new and consistent political imaginary, reactivates a repertoire of visual survivals.
Nicastro's essay explores how contemporary wellness culture, focused on food, fitness, and self-optimization, intersects with far-right ideologies. Drawing on Klaus Theweleit, it argues that bodily practices become sites where anxieties about purity, control, and identity are embodied. Through the case of the movie Soldiers of Lights (2025) by Johannes Büttner and Julian Vogel, the text shows how influencer culture and alternative health movements can subtly normalize extremist worldviews within everyday regimes of self-care.
Post Date: 09-18-2026