Materiality in the Wild: A Posthumanist Approach to Indigenous Knowledge of West African Wild Silk

This paper studies conceptions of Indigenous knowledge-based material practice in the trade, production and use of wild silk within a posthumanist theoretical framework (Barad 2007). By focusing on actual conceptions of its material and symbolic agency, affinities and affordances, it inquires about the silk’s materiality that helps to inform about an Indigenous science of materials that entangles knowledge, technical and belief systems. Wild silk that is produced by silkworms of genus Epanaphe or Anaphe has been for centuries locally harvested in the forests and the Sahelo-Sudanian areas of Nigeria and throughout West Africa. In the Hausa region of Northern Nigeria, indigenous silk that is considered as a material of prestige, has been mainly used in hand embroidery, produced on traditional male robes known as babban riga (Kriger 2010). On these garments, silk patterns that remind of Islamic calligraphy enact as a form of talismanic magic that protect against the evil eye and confer charisma to the wearer. By using travelers’ accounts, colonial reports, museum collections and oral tradition recorded through systematic ethnographic interviews, this paper looks at aspects of Indigenous conceptions about the material, cultural and historical significance of wild silk, starting from the 19th century Sokoto Caliphate located in Northern Nigeria until the contemporary period. Framed within a historical and anthropological approach to materials, the paper’s posthuman focus lies in the examination of silk’s material qualities and properties that include intertwined medicinal and magical values for which this elusive insect material has been praised across West Africa.