 Understanding this transformative, improvisational relationship is a precondition to properly locating the contributions to the periods of emergence and consolidation. With this in mind one can acknowledge that Davis and Outlaw both contribute to and draw from the tradition of critical theory, without diminishing either their originality or their traditional fluency. In similar ways, West and Harris riff on the pragmatist tradition, Mudimbe and Glissant creatively appropriate and employ post-structuralist resources, Gordon and Henry, following William R. Jones and  others,[4]  develop an Africana form of existential phenomenology, and Appiah and Boxill represent Africana thought in an analytic key.