The African Aesthetic in World Creativity: Anthony Braxton's Philosophy of Vibrational

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.
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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

Anthony Braxton's Philosophy of

Vibrational Affinity Dynamics
Gerald J. Frederic
Monash University

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.

Keywords: African aesthetic; Black culture; Western culture; world culture;

Black music; improvisation; creativity; phenomenology

aim in what follows will be to explore composer-musician Anthony

Braxton's conception of "vibrational affinity dynamics" and "affinity
insight" formulated in Tri-Axium Writings and to indicate the significance
of these concepts for the African-centered reconsideration of history and
culture with regard to creativity as seen from a world perspective. I will also
compare Braxton's affinity model to similar models in European philosophy -
such as those found in the postphenomenological tradition - that adopt a
historical-cultural approach toward understanding the ways in which knowl-
edge is produced. This will contribute to a better understanding of the
responses that various thinkers have had to the crisis associated with Western
culture's "anti-culture" (and, in particular, "anti-Black") stance.

130

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 Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 1 3 1

For the purposes of exposing the historical and cultural interconnected-

ness and unitary essence of all modes of knowledge and creativity in world
culture (such modalities include music, philosophy, science, etc.), the
importance of Braxton's philosophy can be seen for its provision of a pow-
erful basis for the critique of the negative implications of Western culture
that are associated with its tendency to affirm itself in separation from the
world group and to suppress the multiformity of knowledge types that are
viewed as exterior to (as well as inferior to) its exclusive cultural alignment.
Braxton's affinity concepts facilitate the comprehension of the role that
African culture has played both in the shaping of the dynamics of world
culture itself, as well as in the re-spiritualization of Western culture -
especially through creative music - in the past century. Braxton's conception
also serves to indicate the continued role that Africa will play in the posi-
tive transformation of world culture to come.

Philosophy of Affinity Dynamics

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

Fundamental to the conception of affinity dynamics is that it is contex-

tualized with respect to the idea of world creativity, which is conceived by
Braxton (1985a) as a "progressional continuum of our total beingness on
earth" (p. 20). From Braxton's world perspective, creativity is seen to tran-
scend the specifics of any one space or time period. All forms of knowledge
are to be seen as creative disclosures of an aspect of "what is." Moreover,
to really understand how a particular vibrational alignment (or cultural real-
ity) came about is to inquire into the path that what Braxton terms "princi-
ple information" has traveled on the physical universe level and to consider
how such information was utilized in the solidification of various culture
groups. This is a consideration that involves understanding what Braxton
refers to as affinity transfer (i.e., the transfer of principle information seen
in terms of the resultant shift in affinity alignment) as well as what is
termed source initiation.

For example, history would seem to indicate that the phenomenon of

improvisation as a discipline developed in the high culture period of an
African nation, namely Egypt, and that this discipline has been handed down
for the use of all humanity (Braxton, 1985a, p. 299). Affinity transfer in this
context facilitates the understanding of how Africans forcibly brought to the
so-called New World were natural improvisers and were able to transfer this
cultural sensibility (through source-initiated activity that affirmed a cultural
continuum with an African affinity base) to new cultural forms such as
music, while at the same time offering Western culture an alternative affin-
ity base aesthetic from which to draw on for the sake of transformation. Of
special significance is that improvisation is an ideal example of a methodol-
ogy that respects affinity dynamics, because it is concerned with, to quote
Braxton (1985a), "the ability to function in a given context in accordance to
each individual's own vibrational flow" (p. 36).

African Aesthetics and World Creativity

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

factors as the raping of Africa and the institutionalization of slavery. That

is, one must apprehend the truth concerning the path that real information
has traveled and the implications of this in terms of the forces that have
been set in motion.

Braxton sees all cultures as equally important in terms of their contribu-

tions to world creativity, and it should be noted that for Braxton, what we
understand as creativity is defined in and through culture. Commenting on
the universal essence basis of all creativity, Braxton (1985a) therefore
claims that "every cultural and racial group utilizes the same principle
forces" (p. 142). All creativity that has been offered by the spectrum of cul-
ture groups is, in Braxton's words, "related to where we, as a collective
people, have come from and where we are going" (p. 126). Therefore,
understanding the reality of world creativity necessitates an objective reex-
amination of history, given that the West has progressively misdocumented
it. Moreover, although this applies to the history of all cultures without
exception, this reexamination, for fundamental reasons, must take place
from an African-centered position.
The effect of redocumentation and distortion resulting from the racially
motivated accounts of Africa given by Western historians serves not only to
undermine the reality of African civilization and its vibrational continuum
but also to "undermine the progressional spread (and expansion) of world
culture" (Braxton, 1985a, p. 23). In other words, world culture needs to
know the truth about African civilization, because this is also the truth
about world civilization.3 Braxton (1985b) observes that "all of the princi-
ple areas of information (knowledge) that we are now dealing with in this
time zone can be researched back into the progressional rise and fall of var-
ious cultures in the world community" (p. 56). In Braxton's composite
vision of world culture, the science or methodology of all creativity is
related to "basic fundamental factors." Dynastic Egypt is identified as "the
basic point to begin examining the particulars of world methodology"
(Braxton, 1985a, p. 15).4
Although it is claimed that world methodology has a unitary essence, it
is of central importance for Braxton to delineate the methodology that
solidifies the African aesthetic continuum in particular, for this allows one
to understand modern forms of Black creativity from the point of view of
how it is initiated from its African source. Black creativity is then viewed
in terms of a "natural continuance of affinity dynamics" (Braxton, 1985a,
p. 240). Thus, Afro- American creativity is seen in terms of the "vibrational
continuance of African creativity" (p. 240), involving a certain absorption
of Western methodology. The consequence of this has been the rediscovery

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1 34 Journal of Black Studies

of the essential foundation of Black creativity that simultaneously affirms a

transformed vibrational position.
Braxton (1985b) claims that "the emergence of the black aesthetic and
its affinity alignment has served as the most significant alternative sensibil-
ity to have emerged in the west during this time period" (p. 43). The sig-
nificance of Black creativity in the West has to do with the peculiar affinity
position of Western culture. For, according to Braxton, the West has estab-
lished itself in separation not only from Black culture but from the reality
of the cultures of the world group, and this has resulted in a progressive
de-spiritualization of Western culture. While identifying Black creativity as
"the single most important realignment factor in this time zone" (Braxton,
1985a, p. 80), Braxton specifically claims that it is creative music from the
Black aesthetic that has been "the strongest factor that has helped to solid-
ify transformation in the west during this time cycle" (p. 313). Following
from this, Braxton proposes that it is the emergence of creative improvised
music that represents "the strongest aesthetic for the formation of a possi-
ble world aesthetic" (p. 313). This has to do with the way in which Black
creativity in the so-called New World, while using Western dynamics, has
naturally provided what Braxton terms "a transfer junction for world par-
ticipation" (p. 98). This has also meant that creativity emerging from the
African aesthetic has asserted itself as the most significant factor in the
re-spiritualization of Western culture dynamics.

Dynamics of Western Culture

Braxton (1985a) is also acutely aware of the political realities of present-

day world culture, involving the dominant position the West (or the "col-
lected forces of Western culture") enjoys with respect to all other culture
groups. He analyzes Western culture dynamics in terms of the role it plays
as a "suppressive tool for sustaining [its] present political position" (p. 276).
As such, Western culture is seen to suffer from a unique impotence, having
to do with its inability "to provide the proper ethical and spiritual dictates
necessary for culture" (p. 5 ).5 Furthermore, Western culture is characterized
not only in terms of its anti-culture attitude but, more specifically, in terms
of its racially motivated anti-Black attitude, the implications of which have
served as the basis for information distortion and the misdocumentation
of history.
In his writings, Braxton demonstrates remarkable insight into the under-
lying philosophical bases of Western cultural dynamics as a progressional

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 Frederic / Vibrational Affinity Dynamics 135

continuum and is able to identify the direct implications of factors relating

to the path that various creative forms have taken over time, including
Western art music, science, and philosophy. For example, he sees the path
that all of these creative forms have taken to be direct consequences of
how the solidification or establishment of Western culture was achieved.

Specifically, the progressional forces associated with Western culture (as a

composite affinity alignment) are "outgrowths of the transformational cycle
between the dissolution of the Egyptian high culture continuum and the
later forming of the Greek and Roman culture continuum" (Braxton, 1985a,
p. 79). Accordingly, this transformational cycle involved the transference of
much principle information, information that was used in a shifted context
that also implied a fundamental shift in affinity dynamics. This is the
"transfer-shift junction" that made Western civilization possible, having to
do with the use (or abuse) of information that was made available.
This junction has, according to Braxton, set the tone for progressional
Western culture dynamics via the establishment of a particular vibrational
attitude. Bound up with the establishment and progressional expansion of
the Western alignment was a tendency, already identifiable in the early
Greek philosophers and arriving at its terminal point in the form of a sci-
entific crisis in modernity, toward what Braxton terms intellectualism.
Braxton elaborates on the way in which this involved a progressional
increase in emphasis on the empirical as a mode of validation of ideas, that
separated itself more and more from the realm of what he terms the spiri-
tual. The vibrational reality of Western culture has been set into motion
through the progressional "application of empiricism without spiritual con-
nections" (Braxton, 1985a, p. 49), and this underlying nature has dictated
how the Western aesthetic position has defined the nature of "what is" (or
essence), that is, this application of empiricism has had consequences for
the affinity dynamics of Western culture that has seen the progressional
"decline of the composite spiritual base of western culture" (p. 50).
What Braxton diagnoses as of central concern in terms of understanding
the negative implications of Western culture is the way in which it has
unfolded according to the concept of separation. On the most basic level,
this has meant that Western culture has affirmed itself in separation from the
world group - as superior and exclusive - and through the distortion of the
information that it used for its own solidification as a vibrational alignment
that has achieved cultural eminence. On the philosophical level, Braxton
(1985a), in a similar fashion to the European modernist philosophers such
as Martin Heidegger, deconstructs the vibrational alignment of Western
culture in terms of the progressional effects of the "separation of essence

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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

Braxton's principles of affinity insight concern the realization of poten-

tial, with respect to the vibrational dynamics of both the individual and cul-
ture. For the individual, affinity insight has to do with self-realization
through the uncovering or disclosure of what is most real according to the
reality defined by one's own affinity dynamics. It involves an individual
"tapping his or her 'life experiences' and vibrational make-up" (Braxton,
1985a, p. 561). Such self-realization can also serve as the basis for insight
into the affinity dynamics of culture. Accordingly, in defining his principles
of affinity insight, Braxton writes of this concept in terms of "the realiza-
tion of spiritual and necessary information about the whole of a given route
of participation or culture, or cultural group by or through self-realization"

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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.

In seeking to identify the common factor that connects all creativity

coming from the African aesthetic, one observes that each projectional
form of creativity - whether it be post-Parker bebop or the post-Ayler
movement - that has emerged in the progressional continuance of this aes-
thetic has provided real insight not only into the transformative implica-
tions of the forced journey of Black people from Africa to America, but also
into the common cultural source from which all of these forms have been
initiated. Thus, Braxton (1985a) writes that the real significance of the work
of creative artists such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor lies in "their
ability to accurately tap the realness of who they 'really are' as understood
in the separate information reality of black methodology and what their
understanding really means in regard to 'black essence'" (p. 277).
However, the implications of the activity of these musicians for the affin-
ity insight principle extend beyond the consideration of the particulars of
Black methodology because, as Braxton (1985a) explains, their activity
"directly gave insight into the nature of composite information" (p. 273), as
they "were able to grasp essential information about the essence reality that
underlines world culture" (p. 273). They were able to achieve this in the
way that they uncovered (and recovered) forces that had not only been lost
in the modern West, but forces that would prove most significant for the
opening up of vibrational paths to be explored by any creative person who
felt a real affinity response. This is what Braxton means by the provision of
a "transfer junction for world participation." It is the uncovering of such
forces through affinity insight that has served as the strongest basis for the
re-spiritualization (realignment) of Western cultural dynamics. Creative
music from the African aesthetic has thus revealed the reality and potential
of alternative affinity dynamics for the positive transformation of Western
and world culture.

It must be recognized that this need to reestablish an alternative spiritu-

alism for the West has long been voiced by some of the leading philosoph-
ical figures in European philosophy, although their responses to this crisis
situation have remained largely ineffective, due to the failure to recognize
the significance of the anteriority of African civilization and the implica-
tions that its destruction had for the initial establishment of Western phi-
losophy and creative dynamics.

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138 Journal of Black Studies

Creativity and One-Dimensional Science

In sharp contrast to Hegel's European-centered teleological model of

history and World-Spirit, Braxton's African-centered vibrational affinity
view posits principle information (which can be traced back through
ancient African civilization) as the basis of creative world methodology and
as underlying the solidification of all historical cultural groups. Thus,
although accounting for the unity of all cultures in the world group,
Braxton's model acknowledges the central role of Africa in terms of the dis-
semination of principle information, while at the same time offering a com-
posite vision of world culture and creativity that respects the contributions
that all cultures have made toward "our total beingness."
In a similar vein to Braxton's conception of affinity insight, one can
identify in the European tradition of philosophy profound attempts to come
to terms with the idea of self-realization through the tapping of one's life
experiences and historical and cultural makeup in order to disclose what is
most true about oneself and about humanity in general. One can see this in
the development of the post-Heideggerian movement of hermeneutics,
involving the work of philosophers such as Hans Georg Gadamer.9 Martin
Heidegger's inquiry into the history of being can be seen as an attempt to
come to terms with the fact that all knowledge has a historical and cultural
origin. Furthermore, he recognized, as Braxton does, that different forms of
knowledge are really only different ways of relating to what is essential
about being human. Heidegger's chief insight involved his notion of
"destructuring" the history of Western philosophy10 for the purposes of dis-
closing new possibilities for the positive transformation of Western culture,
because he was able to locate the signs of an inborn tendency in the writ-
ings of the ancient Greek philosophers toward the modern condition of
Western scientific thinking. This modern condition concerns what Braxton
has referred to as the existential crisis associated with the emphasis on
empiricism at the expense of the spiritual that characterizes the trajectory
of the Western cultural alignment from the Greeks to the present.
In the 1930s, philosophers in the phenomenological tradition - notably
Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger - were deeply involved in coming
to terms not only with the scientific crisis of modernity (or the fact that
knowledge had become de-spiritualized) but also with the consideration of
the genesis of this crisis. Thus, Husserl would write on the "origin of geom-
etry" in his attempts to understand the nature of mathematically idealized
knowledge (see Husserl, 1970). He would also argue that science had lost

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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

of technology in "enframing" certain conceptions of what knowledge is

possible - or what knowledge is to count as "real."11 In the third volume of
Tri-Axium Writings, Braxton (1985c) devotes a substantial section of his
text to the consideration of science, which he contextualizes in terms of cre-
ativity.12 It is because the scope of Braxton's vision is far-reaching enough
to encompass a composite vision of world creativity that explains the state
of Western cultural dynamics and its culmination in one-dimensional
science from the point of view of an African-centered conception of multi-
dimensional knowledge, that his thoughts warrant the attention of all schol-
ars involved in the task of coming to terms with what the positive
transformation of Western - and world - culture will involve.

Coming Together

In Tri-Axium Writings, Anthony Braxton offers a systematic vision of

creativity that reveals the ways in which the Western scientific attitude can
move beyond its one-dimensional definition of knowledge (associated with
its de-spiritualization and mathematically oriented functional reduction of
reality). This will take place through a renewed understanding of the inter-
relationships between all cultures and all forms of creativity and through a
reconnection of science with the higher cosmic implications of creativity.
As Braxton has indicated, this will involve the reexamination and reinte-
gration of composite world information, and of particular relevance will be
creative improvisational music that has emerged from the African aesthetic,
being the most significant positive transformational force in this period.

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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