Ato Sekyi-Otu is a Ghanaian political philosopher. He was born at

Saltpond Saltpond is a town and the capital of the Mfantsiman Municipal District in the Central Region of South Ghana. Saltpond has a population of 24,689 people. Economy History Saltpond was in a state of economic decline since the landing beach was ...

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

in 1941 and until 1971 was known as Daniel Sackey Walker. He was educated at

Mfantsipim School Mfantsipim is an all-boys boarding secondary school in Cape Coast, Ghana, established by the Methodist Church in 1876 to foster intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth on the then Gold Coast. Its founding name was Wesleyan High School and ...

Cape Coast Cape Coast is a city, fishing port, and the capital of Cape Coast Metropolitan District and Central Region of Ghana. It is one of the country's most historic cities, a World Heritage Site, home to the Cape Coast Castle, with the Gulf of Guinea ...

, where he was Head Prefect in 1960-61 and completed his Cambridge Higher School Certificate in 1961 with distinctions in Greek and Latin. He went to

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and received an A.B. in Government in 1966. He pursued graduate studies at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

where he worked with the renowned Canadian political theorist C.B. Macpherson and received his PhD in 1971. Sekyi-Otu taught in the Department of Social Science and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

until he retired in 2006 as Emeritus Professor. He is best known for his work on Frantz Fanon and

Ayi Kwei Armah Ayi Kwei Armah (born 28 October 1939) is a Ghanaian writer best known for his novels including ''The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born'' (1968), '' Two Thousand Seasons'' (1973) and '' The Healers'' (1978). He is also an essayist, as well as having ...

. In 1996 he wrote an acknowledged classic in the literature on Fanon entitled "Fanon's Dialectic of Experience" published by Harvard University Press. His most recent book is "Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays published by Routledge in 2018, which won the 2019 Caribbean Philosophical Association Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book Award. Sekyi-Otu's work has been widely taken up in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

See for instance the article at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,11,1385 and in the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

Published works

*''Fanon's Dialectic of Experience'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) *''Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays'' (Routledge, 2018)

Online articles by Ato Sekyi-Otu

Fanon and the Possibility of Post-Colonial Critical Imagination, 2003

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Ghanaian philosophers Ghanaian academics Ghanaian writers Fanon scholars Marxist humanists Marxist writers Scholars of Marxism York University faculty University of Toronto alumni Harvard College alumni People from Central Region (Ghana) {{Ghana-writer-stub