Rupturing Concepts of Disability and Inclusion

CHAPTER 2
Pluhar also outlines the “full-personhood view”, a view that all and only “full
persons”, inasmuch as they can be fully aware, autonomous, rational beings, are
“maximally morally significant.” 91 This is classically articulated by Immanuel
Kant, whose concept of ‘rational being’ includes the capacity for moral agency:
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Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have,
nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means
and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called
persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in
themselves, i.e., as something which is not to be used merely as means and
hence there is imposed thereby a limit on all arbitrary use of such beings,
which are thus objects of respect. 92
The full-personhood view, though human-centred, is seen to be incompatible with
homocentrism. Humans who fail to be full, autonomous persons are excluded from
full moral consideration and significance, unprotected by any theodic considerations,
and can be at risk of vulnerability and disposability. In a full-personhood view,
notions of entirety are denied and integrality is non-conceived. In such a view,
marginal humans are then afforded similar moral status to animals, and this sets up
a “biconditional challenge”. Pluhar describes this as the claim made by such
philosophers as Peter Singer, Bernard Rollin and Tom Regan, who advocate that
either marginal humans, like animals, have no moral status, or that higher-level
animals are granted similar or, in some cases, superior moral status than very
marginal humans such as people with intellectual disabilities, the senile, the
comatosed, foetuses, the insane, and brain-damaged infants. 93 These ethical debates
of personhood and human status, 94 which must necessarily inform discussions of
inclusion and exclusion, have been, to a large extent, ignored in literature about
inclusion.
2.4 DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF INCLUSION
A scan of the literature suggests that in recent times, two approaches have
dominated practices and scholarship about inclusion. First, the technical approach
seeks to translocate within the public arena, historical deficit-focused ideologies of
disability constructed from notions about individual impaired and burdensome
bodies. These translocations, exemplified with the movement from special
institutional to community care or regular settings, are facilitated by technical
processes such as the provision of professional assessment processes, ‘inclusion’
workers, personal planning and skill training programs, and attention to the
physical environment. 95 Second, the legislative approach seeks to address the
socio-political context of processes of disablement by legislation committed to the
protection of human and civil rights, and anti-discrimination processes. 96
This research proposes another approach – an ethical approach – which challenges
exclusion as well as the inadequacy of technical and legislative processes; and
identifies hidden assumptions which cause flaws and problems for people with
intellectual disability in particular. Descriptive processes of exclusion of marginal
groups, such as people with intellectual disability, can be found in socio-historical