ABSTRACT
This section concerns itself with African metaphysics and epistemology, with a specific focus on what it means to be a person in the African context. I also explore the implications of the notion of a person for educational discourse(s) in Africa. Using a poststructuralist understanding of metaphysics, with reference to the work of Derrida, I first frame the notion of African metaphysics. In turn, I adopt a similar approach to the aforementioned to elucidate epistemology. Thereafter, I move on to a discussion of the material person versus immaterial being debate, before offering a poststructuralist, more specifically Derridian, analysis of the individual versus community thesis that has now become so prominent in the discourses in and about African philosophy and philosophy of education. My argument is that African metaphysics and epistemology should look beyond their use of the binary oppositions of material person versus spiritual (immaterial) person, and individual versus community to articulate a notion of human engagement along the Derridian lines of what it means to act responsibly in a metaphysical sense and critically in an epistemological sense.
