Knowledge Production by Yorùbá Literary Intellectuals from Nigeria as Decolonial Performance

Addressing critically the question of the relations of African thought with global epistemological matrices, this article puts into perspective the intellectual production of Yorùbá authors from Nigeria since the late nineteenth century, including literary works, with contemporary calls for decolonizing knowledge. It defends the premise that the knowledge produced by the Yorùbá people is an example of locally produced knowledge drawing from ìṣẹ̀ṣe and categories that do not come from Western thought. Orality, writing, craft, language, among others, are forms through which moral views and epistemic thought were expressed, shaping what is today called àṣà among the Yorùbá, that is, culture or cultural heritage.