Affinity Dynamics
Author(s): Gerald J. Frederic
Source: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Nov., 2007), pp. 130-141
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034971
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Journal of Black Studies
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Journal of Black Studies
Volume 38 Number 2
November 2007 130-141
© 2007 Sage Publications
The African Aesthetic in 10.11 77/002 1 934705283772
http://jbs.sagepub.com
World Creativity
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
With a focus on the African aesthetic in the context of world creativity, this
article explores the conception of "vibrational affinity dynamics" formulated
in Anthony Braxton's Tri-Axium Writings. From an African-centered position
that exposes the historical and cultural interconnectedness of all modes of
knowledge in world culture, Braxton's conceptual tools are examined in con-
junction with a critique of the negative implications of Western culture that
are associated with the tendency to suppress the multiformity of knowledge
types that are perceived as Other. Braxton's related notion of "affinity
insight" is analyzed and compared with related models from the European
postphenomenological tradition. Braxton's affinity concepts are shown to
facilitate the comprehension of the role that African culture has played in the
re-spiritualization of Western culture - especially through creative music - in
the past century, as well as the continued role that Africa will play in the
positive transformation of world culture.
130
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Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 1 3 1
Affinity dynamics concern the different ways of being (or relating to the
"is") that are specific to both individual human beings as well as culture
groups, having to do with how they are vibrationally aligned according to
forces that set them into motion. In Braxton's (1985b) words, the phrase
"affinity dynamics" refers to "the vibrational attraction mechanism which
determines how a given individual or person moves towards defining - and
interpreting" (p. 75). Every person and indeed every cultural group is seen
to function according to his, her, or its own affinity dynamics. The concept
of affinity dynamics is directly related to the consideration of the vibra-
tional situation that one is born into (involving factors such as race1 and
"physical universe position." However, one's vibrational alignment is also
subject to influence and manipulation from outside forces such as the edu-
cation system and the various systems of the media, forces that in many
cases seek to realign one's vibrational nature according to imposed defini-
tions of how to be. Thus, to understand Braxton's conception of vibrational
affinity dynamics, one needs to consider the concept of knowledge in terms
of the particular vibrational focus or natural inclination that one brings to
any given interpretative situation. Braxton's term vibrational also serves to
capture what he on occasion calls the "higher forces" associated with
knowledge, what we might understand as the spiritual or mystical attributes
associated with any way of doing or being.2
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132 Journal of Black Studies
In the same way that world creativity is conceived in terms of its com-
posite dynamics, involving "a total reality continuum," Braxton views mod-
ern Black culture in the context of a trans- African vibrational continuum, as
he recognizes that to understand the dynamics of any cultural phenomenon,
one must view it from a composite world-oriented position and in terms of
its historical and contemporary interdependence. Thus, the consideration of
Black culture must be oriented toward its composite identity and must be
viewed in terms of the vibrational-transfer implications associated with such
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Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 133
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1 34 Journal of Black Studies
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Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 135
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136 Journal of Black Studies
into 'idea' and 'spiritualism'" (p. 48). 6 Hence, Braxton speaks of the factors
that led to the solidification of the "idea-alignment" of Western culture, as
well as the implications of this development for the consideration of
Western affinity dynamics.7 The phenomenon of separation can also be
observed in the way in which creativity has been separated into the inde-
pendent areas of, for example, music, dance, painting, and sculpture or even
chemistry, physics, and biology.
Braxton ( 1 985b) insists that the collected forces that make up Western cul-
ture are "a platform for European and/or EuroAmerican Caucasians" (p. 122)
and that these forces need to be challenged. The collected forces of Western
culture serve to narrow the affinity dynamics of Black and world culture, lim-
iting the vibrational options available to all non-White people - the result
being that "more and more non- white people are unable to tap their own
affinity dynamics" (p. 80). Western culture's suppression of the Other is the
suppression of alternative affinity dynamics.8 In Braxton's words, "the col-
lected forces of western culture have deliberately designed a reality perspec-
tive that retards the function of any affinity slant other than what it perceives
as its own" (p. 54). The real challenge mounted in response to Western cul-
ture dynamics in terms of its positive transformation (or re-spiritualization)
will only be realized through the assertion of alternative affinity dynamics.
More specifically, it is the alternative creativity emerging from the African
aesthetic - in the form of creative Black music - that has presented itself as
the most significant factor for this re-spiritualization of Western cultural
dynamics. To understand what this involves is to have some appreciation of
what Braxton refers to as affinity insight.
Affinity Insight
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Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 1 37
(p. 561). Affinity insight also implies that for a given individual or cultural
group to solidify its own reality, it must secure an awareness of its own def-
initions as well as be able to use these definitions.
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138 Journal of Black Studies
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Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 1 39
its meaning for life in the way that it excluded the consideration of "the
meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of this human existence"
(Husserl, 1970, p. 6) and that this situation required a renewed historical
inquiry into "what was originally and always sought in philosophy."
Likewise, Heidegger would develop a powerful critique of the modern age
via his consideration of the dominance of mathematical science and the role
Coming Together
Notes
1. For an example of Braxton's understanding of the concept of race and its relationship
to affinity dynamics, see Braxton (1985a, pp. 135-139; 1985b, p. 59; 1985c, p. 173).
2. Graham Lock offers some insightful critical comments on Braxton's use of the word
vibrational (see, in particular, Lock, 1999, p. 171).
3. Braxton mentions Chancellor Williams and Yosef Ben Jochannan as examples of
authoritative scholars on the history of the progressional development of African civilization.
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140 Journal of Black Studies
4. It is important to note that Braxton resists making the claim that African civilization,
by way of Egypt, is the absolute beginning of history. He recognizes the "chicken-or-the-egg"
absurdity of positing such a beginning, mentioning, albeit in passing, the possibility of the
anteriority of Atlantis. This does not diminish, however, the central importance that Braxton
attributes to African civilization for the understanding of the dynamics of world culture.
5. Relevant to Braxton's (1985b) understanding of culture here is his notion of "high cul-
ture," which he defines in the following passage: "If we would view a given segment of people
as the vibrational resultant of the composite beings of that group and also the physical universe
coordinates of the region that group existed in, then it would be possible to also view the high
culture solidification of that group as an affirmation of the composite particulars underlying
what these dynamic factors cosmically meant - I call that resultant center (or cultural center)
and from that basis I have come to refer to a given sector with respect to its 'vibrational-center-
factor"' (p. 90).
6. See, for example, Martin Heidegger's interpretation of Plato; Heidegger identifies in
Plato a separation between the Idea and Being, a separation that has had ramifications for the
destiny of post-Platonic Western philosophy and that Heidegger claims was directly responsi-
ble for the emergence and dominance of modern scientific thinking over the properly philo-
sophical engagement with the question of Being.
7. Braxton views the Western affinity alignment from the time of Plato and Aristotle up to
the modern period of the past century as culminating in what he terms existentialism, result-
ing from a progressional disconnection from spiritualism. Braxton (1985a) also sees what he
calls Western art music as developing in parallel to Western philosophy: "The basic thrust pro-
jection of western art music would move to become an existential expansion" (p. 63). Braxton
draws the connection between "the early transfer junction concerning Pythagorean use of
number" and "the gradual forming of the functional science of western music" (p. 49).
8. Braxton discusses the suppressive tendencies of Western culture in terms of his notion
of "spectacle diversion"; see, in particular, the section entitled "The Spectacle Diversion
Syndrome" (Braxton, 1985b, pp. 1-51).
9. See, for example, Gadamer's conception of "effective-historical consciousness" that he
offers in his Truth and Method.
10. For a discussion of the implications of Heidegger's method of destructuring the history
of Western philosophy, see Bernasconi (1995).
1 1. Heidegger's views with regard to modern science in terms of what he calls "the math-
ematical" perhaps find their most concentrated discussion in his writings on the philosopher
Emmanuel Kant (see, in particular, Heidegger, 1967). For Heidegger's treatment of technol-
ogy and the "enframing" of knowledge, see Heidegger (1977).
12. See the section titled "Creativity and Science" (Braxton, 1985c, pp. 51-87).
References
Bernasconi, R. (1995). Heidegger and the invention of the Western philosophical tradition.
Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology, 26(3), 240-254.
Braxton, A. (1985a). Tri-axium writings: Vol. 1. Oakland, CA: Frog Peak Music.
Braxton, A. (1985b). Tri-axium writings: Vol. 2. Oakland, CA: Frog Peak Music.
Braxton, A. (1985c). Tri-axium writings: Vol. 3. Oakland, CA: Frog Peak Music.
Heidegger, M. (1967). What is a thing? (W. B. Barton, Jr., & V. Deutsch, Trans.). Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company.
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Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 141
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology. In W. Lovitt (Trans.), The question
concerning technology and other essays (pp. 3-35). New York: Harper & Row.
Husserl, E. (1970). Crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology (D. Carr,
Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Lock, G. (1999). Blutopia. London: Duke University Press.
Gerald J. Frederic has completed a bachelor of arts and a bachelor of science, both at
Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where he is currently a doctoral candidate in the
Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. His areas of specialization include
African philosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of science, and music.
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