Anton Wilhelm Amo Lecture 2026: The Genesis of Doubt: From Anton Wilhelm Amo to Ghana’s Democracy; Invited speaker: Prof. Ato Quayson, Chair, Department of African and African American Studies, Stanford University

Abstract

This lecture will adopt the life and work of Anton Wilhelm Amo as the take-off point for reflecting on the genesis of doubt and its uses in society and politics.  It will be shown through and interpretation of various sources from philosophy and literature that doubt has many modes of articulation, partly in relation to established protocols of reasoning, but also with respect to aesthetic objects and to shared communal values.  It will be shown that in philosophy doubt is elevated to a cardinal methodological principle regarding the interrogation of premises, and that this interrogation forms the primary scaffolding for the construction of arguments in all branches of the discipline.  In literature, on the other hand, doubt is expressed in relation to affect and consciousness, the primary mode relating to the rejection of dominant norms of being in society. Examples for the argument will be drawn from Aristotle’s Poetics  and NIcomachean Ethics, the Book of Job, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, among various others.  Finally, a foray will be made on speculations about the role of doubt in political discourse in Ghana.