Paper short abstract:

During the 20th century, mostly foreign scholars (Ulli Beier and Suzanne Wenger) and few Nigerian scholars focused on African textile, which includes indigo-dyed textiles – popularly called adire among Yoruba people – but as a minor art form – focusing on the describable aspects and neglecting its sociality

Paper long abstract:

During the 20th century, mostly foreign scholars (Ulli Beier and Suzanne Wenger) and few Nigerian scholars focused on African textile, which includes indigo-dyed textiles - popularly called adire among Yoruba people - but as a minor art form - focusing on the describable aspects and neglecting its sociality - the symbolic and social contexts of indigo-dyed textile processes in comparison to other artistic expression such as sculpture. This is due to periods of underdevelopment - much of it imposed from outside - the colonization and post-colonization projects - have posed a threat to the nature of its scholarship. In the 21st century, despite the emergence of narrative and humanistic anthropological inscription on thriving indigenous textile technologies through agency, practice and performance - scholars, mostly from the West treat the indigo dyed-textile products as homogenous products and devoid of the Yoruba women-dyers' symbolic and indigenous narratives - a colonized knowledge - descriptive and economic-cetred. However, in the present theoretical moment - the decolonization of knowledge, this paper through the ethnographic account of women dyers in the indigo textile dyeing production processes re-examined the theoretical analyses of the indigenous indigo textile; specifically the agency, practice and performance of the Yoruba women dyers' knowledge within the context of decolonization of knowledge - an addition to the defamiliarizing collaborative projects.