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.