Rupturing Concepts of Disability and Inclusion

CHAPTER 1
‘Inclusion’ is a metaconcept. Different facets of inclusion can be metaphorically
conceptualised as a position, a belief, an aspiration, a policy, a practice, an action, a
sense of being, and an ideal. However, it is essential to recognise that inclusion is
conceptually embedded in a dualistic and dichotomous relationship with exclusion. 7
Whilst exclusion can be beneficial and positive in some contexts by protecting
notions of choice, solidarity and particular social practices or actions, it is ‘negative
exclusion’ which is most prevalent in the lives of people with intellectual disability.
Such negative exclusion is seemingly founded upon lack of choice, assumptions of
inferiority, and burden. An inclusion/exclusion relationship is, therefore, structurally
similar to other dichotomies whereby power, hierarchy and containment are implicit.
These are dichotomies such as abled and disabled, normal and abnormal, male and
female, white and black, mind and body.
Inclusion and exclusion are also second-order concepts. They are terms which
cannot exist in their own right such as the objects of first order concepts; but which
are conjoined to other concepts such as order, humanity, society, community,
school, group, church and so on. Inclusion is subjected to the values therein of such
concepts, and membership is defined on the basis of pre-defined legitimacy to be
similar to the dominant members.
It can be claimed, then, that while understandings of integration for people with
disability, particularly intellectual disability, have sought to highlight and address
characteristics of segregation: proponents of the notion of inclusion, though
implicitly recognising marginality, have inadequately addressed the structural
dynamics of societal and community exclusion, that is, morally speaking, inclusion
is so bound up with its opposite – exclusion – that it must be rendered with care. I
contend that addressing structural exclusion is not merely about attending to
‘absence’ or the state of ‘being left out’. It involves the intentional deconstruction
of processes of active exclusion configured with existing relationships of power,
orthodoxy, and hegemony.
In this research, I promote this extended view. I assert that ‘inclusion’ is not
only a dualistic term in a dichotomous relationship with ‘exclusion’, but also is a
multifaceted, complex concept which commands a socio-ethical critique. I explore
such an assertion by arguing that historical and contemporary conceptualisations
of exclusion for people with disability have been constructed from various
philosophical and theological matrices imbued with particular values. These matrices,
I contend, are immersed, impregnated, controlled, and bounded by contexts of
patriarchy (rule of the father linked to the male-female gender dualism underpinning
the Western Logic of Identity) and kyriarchy (rule of the master and Lord linked to
the power of social arrangements and structures) – contexts to be explored in depth
later. 8 In doing so, I identify two dominating ethics underpinning various practice
frameworks of services for people with intellectual disability. These practices
which embrace policies and human services in a Judeo-Christian context represent
various types of inclusion, and are, therefore, mapped with a contextual applied
ethics framework to highlight various assumptions about power, position, personhood
and principles within them.
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