Cloth as Metaphor: (Re)reading the Adinkra Cloth

About the Book

Adinkra symbols visually integrate striking aesthetic power, evocative language, mathematical structures and philosophical concepts. The book views the Adinkra cloth symbols as a writing system. It develops themes from the texts encoded in the proverbs, stories, and maxims associated with the symbols. The themes covered include Akan cosmology, social and political organization, social and ethical values, economics, and Akan knowledge systems. “Perhaps the most modern and certainly one of the most comprehensive works on Adinkra” (Oluwatoyin Adepoju).

About the Author

G. F. Kojo Arthur was born and raised in Ghana where he grew up in the royal courts of the Odekuro and Omanhene of Ajumako. He attended university in the United States, where he lived and worked for almost forty years. He was associate professor, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, and the project director of the Akan Symbols Project. He is the executive director of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems.