In this dissertation, I examine the situatedness and importance of African rhetorics within the field of rhetoric and writing as well as its related fields. Grounded in a decolonial research orientation and rooted in African thought, I investigate how African worldviews can be analyzed to reveal the profound rhetorical power and significance embedded in Indigenous African knowledge systems. I focus on African rhetoric and then shed light on how the shortcomings of Euro-Western frameworks adopted to examine any phenomena in African contexts tend to often lead some scholars to reduce African worldviews and rhetorical practices to superficial elements such as aesthetics, religious performances, or entertainment. To address these constrained perspectives, I propose and develop the sankofa methodology—a decolonial research framework inspired by the Akan philosophical concept of sankofa, which emphasizes purposeful return to the past in order to reclaim, reinterpret, and reapply valuable cultural knowledge for the present and future. Through this methodology, I investigate the deep-seated knowledge and rhetorical dexterity of kente and kente weaving. Focusing on the rhetorical and technical communication dimensions of kente and kente weaving among the Ewe people of Ghana, I use talking circles and counter-storytelling to engage with weavers to uncover, articulate, and reclaim the epistemic, communal, and meaning-making power of kente weaving practice. By adopting a decolonial perspective, this research offers new insights into how African meaning-making practices foster community-building, inclusivity, and decolonial encounters. This research contributes to decolonial and Indigenous rhetoric, technical communication, and cultural and material rhetorics by foregrounding relationality, cultural specificity, and rhetorical sovereignty. Ultimately, this research calls for a paradigmatic shift that centers African ways of knowing as vital to global knowledge-making practices.
Read
