https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6654-8269
Resumen
En esta oportunidad se analizan algunas opresiones fundamentales que afectan al género académico indexado como educación inclusiva. A tal efecto, sostengo que lo que conocemos como educación inclusiva no es tal cosa. Sólo conocemos un disfraz pseudo-heurístico que impone los paradigmas fundantes de la educación especial, su modelo didáctico y epistemológico, para rellenar estratégicamente un espacio en blanco. Lo que nombramos a través del sintagma ‘educación inclusiva’ no es más que un sistema de transliteración arbitraria de diversos cuerpos de saberes, formas categoriales y repertorios metodológicos propios de la educación especial, cooptando signos definitorios –identidad y rostricidad– de la educación inclusiva. Estamos en presencia de un territorio de investigación que deambula con gran fuerza por diversas estructuras académicas, compromisos éticos y proyectos políticos –muchos de ellos, de dudosa reputación– sin saber quién es. El trabajo concluye observando que, tomar la educación especial como educación inclusiva es incurrir en el mismo fallo. Por ello, resulta fundamental comprender a la educación inclusiva en tanto estética de lo sensible, no solo porque construye un sensorium específico, sino, porque sus fuerzas de organización intelectual tienen la difícil tarea de desarmar el ensamblaje sobre el que se asienta el reparto de lo sensible, para permitir que emerjan nuevas formas de distribuir las formas de ver, de representar, de escuchar, de hablar, etc. Esta es una capacidad críticamente democrática.
Palabras clave: educación inclusiva, problemas de análisis, epistemología y construcción del conocimiento.
On this occasion I analyze some fundamental oppressions that affect the academic genre indexed as inclusive education. To this end, I maintain that what we know as inclusive education is not such a thing. We only know a pseudo-heuristic disguise that imposes the founding paradigms of special education, its didactic and epistemological model to strategically fill in a blank space. What we name through the phrase ‘inclusive education’ is nothing more than a system of arbitrary transliteration of diverse bodies of knowledge, categorical forms and methodological repertoires typical of special education, co-opting defining signs - identity and face - of inclusive education. We are in the presence of a research territory that wanders with great force through various academic structures, ethical commitments and political projects – many of them, of dubious reputation – without knowing who it is. The work concludes by observing that taking special education as inclusive education is making the same mistake. For this reason, it is essential to understand inclusive education as an aesthetic of the sensitive, not only because it builds a specific sensorium, but also because its forces of intellectual organization have the difficult task of dismantling the assembly on which the distribution of what is based is based. sensitive, to allow new ways of distributing ways of seeing, representing, listening, speaking, etc. to emerge. This is a critically democratic capacity.
Keywords: inclusive education; analysis problems; epistemology; construction of knowledge.
Resumo
Nesta ocasião analiso algumas opressões fundamentais que afetam o gênero acadêmico indexado como educação inclusiva. Para este fim, afirmo que o que conhecemos como educação inclusiva não é tal coisa. Conhecemos apenas um disfarce pseudo-heurístico que impõe os paradigmas fundadores da educação especial, o seu modelo didático e epistemológico para preencher estrategicamente um espaço em branco. O que denominamos através da expressão “educação inclusiva” nada mais é do que um sistema de transliteração arbitrária de diversos corpos de conhecimento, formas categóricas e repertórios metodológicos típicos da educação especial, cooptando signos definidores – identidade e face – da educação inclusiva. Estamos diante de um território de pesquisa que vagueia com muita força por diversas estruturas acadêmicas, compromissos éticos e projetos políticos – muitos deles, de reputação duvidosa – sem saber quem é. O trabalho conclui observando que considerar a educação especial como educação inclusiva é cometer o mesmo erro. Por isso, é fundamental compreender a educação inclusiva como uma estética do sensível, não só porque constrói um sensório específico, mas também porque as suas forças de organização intelectual têm a difícil tarefa de desmantelar o conjunto sobre o qual se dá a distribuição do que é baseado é baseado em sensível, para permitir que surjam novas formas de distribuir modos de ver, representar, ouvir, falar, etc. Esta é uma capacidade criticamente democrática.
Palavras-chave: educação inclusiva; problemas de análise; epistemologia; construção do conhecimento.
DOI del artículo: https://doi.org/10.26620/uniminuto.inclusion.11.2.2024.45-66
Introduction
First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Universidad de La Serena (ULS) and, in particular, to Professor Marcos Elizondo Vega for this unexpected yet generous invitation to speak with you today. With each passing opportunity, I find greater fulfillment in engaging with diverse communities of meaning and application as I share my research on the epistemology of inclusive education.
I would like to begin this lecture by asserting that what we recognize as inclusive education is, in fact, not what it claims to be. What we currently conceive as inclusive education is merely a pseudo-heuristic construct, one that imposes the foundational paradigms of special education—particularly its traditional didactic and epistemological model—strategically filling a conceptual void that remains largely unexplored. The term inclusive education functions as an arbitrary transliteration system, borrowing from various bodies of knowledge, categorical frameworks, and methodological repertoires inherent to special education. In doing so, it appropriates the defining markers—identity and subjectivity—of inclusive education itself.
We are confronted with a research field that forcefully navigates across multiple academic frameworks, ethical commitments, and political agendas—many of them of questionable legitimacy—without a clear sense of its own identity. I have termed this intricate process the ‘Oedipization of the object of inclusive education’—that is, the true essence of inclusion remains unknown to us, and even less understood in its vast complexity. What dominates specialized literature, public policies, research, and the pre- and post-graduate training of educators is its most paradoxical failure—that is, the persistent misinterpretation of inclusive education as special education. This misrepresentation crystallizes a body of knowledge that originates in deception and perpetuates multiple layers of misdirection, a knowledge system devoid of objective self-referential foundations. This concept serves as the foundation for what I describe through the metaphor of the ‘deceiver-deceived’.
The hegemonic notion of ‘inclusion’—both as a field of study and as a social phenomenon—and ‘inclusive education’—as an intellectual framework—is fundamentally shaped by what I have previously defined as its most paradoxical failure. This leads to various epistemic distortions, categorical misinterpretations, and methodological misconceptions in the way its object and terminology are approached. In dominant discourse, the category of ‘inclusion’ exhibits an extreme degree of elasticity, giving rise to a loosely defined policy of indiscriminate acceptance—an ‘anything goes’ mentality driven by an excessively overused and uncritical qualifier. I support this point, given that discussions on inclusive education are often marked by reductionism and trivialization. The discourse appears constrained by signifiers that align with specific political and theoretical positions—positions that, while restrictive, serve to enable various forms of political opportunism and epistemic reductionism.
My presentation today will not focus on what my colleagues—whose wisdom, experience, and knowledge I greatly respect—have discussed so far regarding interculturality, the primary object of inquiry in this colloquium. Instead, I will position my argument within what I refer to as a syntagmatic field3—a conceptual framework that reveals the underlying structure of inclusive education as an epistemological construct. This construct, which I term epistemological diasporism, underscores that specialized knowledge is not static but emerges from dispersion, movement, relational thought, encounters, plasticity, translation, and the dynamics of external interactions. Each of the epistemological resources that constitute the production field of inclusive education forms an assemblage whose structure is sustained by the principle of external relations. Let us not forget that inclusive education constructs a new object—one that belongs to no single entity. It is not indifferent; it does not reject any of its inheritances. Rather, it is engaged in generating something fundamentally new—an entity whose uniqueness lies in its inability to be fully encapsulated within the paradigms of any existing discipline, as it inherently transcends them. Its epistemological foundation is post-disciplinary, acknowledging that its specialized knowledge is constructed outside and beyond the limits of each of the disciplines that contribute to it.
Before proceeding, I would like to make two crucial clarifications. The first is that when we speak of inclusive education, we are not referring to special education. I want to emphasize this unequivocally because this distinction represents its primary genealogical failure or cognitive misinterpretation, resulting in a process of hybridization and distortion that reconfigures the power of the qualifier as a characteristic of the special. In response to this, I must clarify that while the special can be considered a form of the inclusive, the inclusive is not a form of the special. Rather, it constitutes a strategy for transforming all fields of knowledge and spheres of human development, where the human being is understood as a subject of multiple singularities.
The second clarification is that inclusive education, as a field of knowledge, is an intangible and non-fixed territory in which margins intersect, and a series of concepts undergo displacement, transformation, translation, and rearticulation. To fully grasp this, I believe it is necessary to recognize five fundamental problems that shape inclusive education as an investigative domain. These problems are: a) Fundamental Problem 1: The ontological problem of inclusive education—the tension between (anti)humanism and the inventive paradigm of human forms. b) Fundamental Problem 2: The epistemological problem of inclusive education—the pitfalls of replication and mimesis, and the unconscious reliance on arguments versus the creative power of epistemological agency. c) Fundamental Problem 3: The methodological problem of inclusive education—how we conceptualize knowledge, the imaginative challenge of reconfiguring research practices, and the evolving approaches to training professionals in this field. d) Fundamental Problem 4: The morphological problem of inclusive education—shifting from the study of essentialist-individualist structures to the development of a vocabulary that aligns with multiplicity. e) Fundamental Problem 5: The semiotic problem of inclusive education—icons and images that are validated as markers of inclusion versus the frameworks of perception and discourse that shape our understanding.
The first fundamental problem highlights the absence of an ontological framework with clear criteria for intelligibility and mechanisms of standardization that would allow for the recognition of the subject beyond a reductive policy of recognizing knowledge abjects or objectified subjects—an erroneous approach rooted in a neo-special perspective. This process is ultimately the result of a complex policy that conceals a series of essentialist-individualist assumptions, closely resembling the perspectives that the preceding speakers in this colloquium have addressed.
The second problem pertains to the epistemic dimension. Here, the central issue is the absence of a theory that defines the meanings, scope, and nature of this approach from its intellectual differential. This field lacks a comprehensive theory; at present, it is shaped by a diverse set of influences. The only existing epistemology is the one proposed by Ocampo (2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020). In my view, the epistemic dimension diverges from a canonical signifier traditionally associated with grand paradigms, thereby obstructing the study of the heuristic forms specific to this field. For this reason, my work focuses on examining the conditions under which its specialized knowledge is produced, recognizing that the epistemic problem—or rather, its epistemic deficit—demonstrates the field’s inability to clarify what inclusive education is in terms of its nature, function, meaning, and scope. This issue manifests in an analytical-methodological landscape that struggles to define its own singularity or scientific identity.Inclusive education as a field of knowledge is a non-existent territory in which margins are crossed and a series of ideas are dislocated and affected by a series of mutations, translations and rearticulations.
The third fundamental problem I identify concerns the lack of research methods and methodologies, a deficiency that not only hampers a precise understanding of each research problem but also significantly impacts the training parameters for professionals in the field. Methodological considerations, in dialogue with the specificity of inclusive education, confirm three key dimensions of analysis: a) Interest in methodology invites us to reflect on how we conceptualize a given phenomenon or, alternatively, the epistemological strategies employed by practitioners when engaging with a particular object. b) How we structure the training and instructional frameworks for future professionals in this field, taking into account its epistemological and ontological foundations. c) How we access and interpret its theoretical, empirical, and analytical object.
The fourth problem, termed the morphological problem, pertains to the study of its conceptual structures and the nature of its conceptual instruments. It highlights the foundational categories that define this field and documents a significant deficiency of conceptual tools capable of authentically describing each of its objects. Let us recall, as Bal (2009) suggests in the remarkable book published in Spanish by Cendeac, entitled: “Conceptos Viajeros en las Humanidades: una guía de viaje” (Traveling Concepts in the Humanities: A Travel Guide), that concepts function as miniature theories. They create the conditions for dialogue and equity among diverse fields of knowledge, ensuring legibility and comprehension for each of their objects. When misused, these concepts tend to distort the function of the object. When founded on the imposition of the special, the object is constructed from erroneous categories, which blur the potency of its intellectual action. I will further elaborate on this point throughout my presentation. The object of inclusive education, inherently post-disciplinary, is eccentric and possesses an external voice, reaffirming that it listens to and articulates its concerns beyond theoretical work. That is, it engages with a broad spectrum of knowledge projects in resistance, political initiatives, and ethical commitments—many of them anti-humanist.
The final fundamental issue of inclusive education pertains to the study of its images or visual representations. The challenge of dismantling and/or altering the dominant visual imaginary of inclusivity lies in the persistence of a being that is not. I have termed this issue the Oedipization of the object of inclusive education—something more than a heuristic resentment, an operation that inhibits a full, vital comprehension of its intellectual, ontological, and now visual forms. This inhibition ensures that it remains bound to a corpus of properties that do not belong to it. As a result, a consistency is preserved that fixes properties erroneously attributed to it, sustaining its state as an object subject to persistent formative deterioration.
However, studying the images of inclusive education should equip us with tools “to alter the order that defines its properties, granting the ability to introduce a decisive transformation in its mode of manifestation” (Soto, 2023, p. 61). These images can be interpreted as visual constructs that move without a defined destination. What is clear, however, is their capacity to guide us toward other planes of sensitivity. Inclusive education establishes a distinct sensorium centered on multiplicity and heterogeneity.
Below is a summary table outlining the main characteristics of the fundamental issues of inclusive education.
| Table 1. Most relevant characteristics of the fundamental problems of inclusive education, identified by Ocampo (2024) | |
|---|---|
| Fundamental Problem 1. The ontological problem of inclusive education: (anti)humanism and the inventive regime of human forms. |
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| Problema fundamental 1. El problema ontológico de la educación inclusiva: el (anti)humanism y el régimen inventivo de las formas de lo humano. |
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| Fundamental Problem 2. The epistemological problem of inclusive education—the pitfalls of replication and mimesis, and the unconscious reliance on arguments versus the creative power of epistemological agency. |
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| Fundamental Problem 2. The epistemological problem of inclusive education—the pitfalls of replication and mimesis, and the unconscious reliance on arguments versus the creative power of epistemological agency. |
|
| Fundamental Problem 3. The methodological problem of inclusive education—how we conceptualize knowledge, the imaginative challenge of reconfiguring research practices, and the evolving approaches to training professionals in this field. |
|
| Fundamental Problem 4. The morphological problem of inclusive education—shifting from the study of essentialist-individualist structures to the development of a vocabulary that aligns with multiplicity. |
|
| Fundamental Problem 4. The morphological problem of inclusive education—shifting from the study of essentialist-individualist structures to the development of a vocabulary that aligns with multiplicity. |
|
| Fundamental Problem 5. The semiotic problem of inclusive education—icons and images that are validated as markers of inclusion versus the frameworks of perception and discourse that shape our understanding. |
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| Note: Source: Prepared by the authors. | |
If we connect these five major analytical obstacles, we can conclude that this field is a no man’s land— an assumption that leads me to assert that inclusive education does not adhere to any specific theoretical or methodological practice, despite developing and applying its own methods. It is a space where multiple knowledge projects intersect, interact, mediate, translate, engage in dialogue, and negotiate. However, in its (re)articulation— referring to its epistemological pragmatics— little to nothing is effectively restructured, translated, or interrelated in accordance with the heuristic frameworks of this unique field of analysis. This results in the continuous proliferation of assimilation practices, understood as practices of social vindication— principles regulating the zone of being5, imaginary spatiality, and the geopolitics characteristic of Eurocentrism and the multiple political and analytical regimes legitimized by a Western-centric rationale. These, without a doubt, lead to the systemic erasure of the social experience of numerous groups marked by the signifier of the abject— instruments that function as regulatory figurations, or strategically prefabricated ontological regimes. At a cognitive level, they generate subject-effects and legibility-effects in shaping the understanding of subjects within inclusive education.
The complexity revealed by the phenomenon of inclusion confirms its structural and micropractical nature. It invites us to rethink political and micropractical coordinates— the everyday, lived experience, and the corpus of objects that shape our orientation within these experiences— and the spatialities that crystallize in response to the political, social, cultural, and economic demands that this singular program of change must address.
The call issued by the title of this section is to recognize that many proposals on justice— particularly those that integrate the social as an additive element— ultimately leave us in the same place. This is because we face a system of co-optation by the hegemonic and supremacist rationality of capitalism, which demands that we shift toward situated transformations, complex understandings, and disruptive imaginaries to critically explore the intersections between the structural— institutional rules governing societal function— and the micropractical— the everyday— that unfold within the complexities of social and pedagogical intermediation. When we speak of education and interculturality, we are also addressing inherently social and political phenomena. It is at this intersection that nearly all, if not all, of our discussions converge on transforming the interrelations of multiple systems that constitute the contemporary world we inhabit.
Let us now consider: why and for what purpose does inclusive education exist? At the research center I direct—the Center for Latin American Studies of Inclusive Education—we structure our intellectual activity around inclusive education as a political project, not as a parliamentary relationship, but rather as one that preserves the inherent nature of social conflicts. This idea distinguishes itself from politics, understood as the means of institutional reproduction, such as laws, decrees, and other regulatory mechanisms. We operate within the framework provided by Chantal Mouffe in her book published in 2007 by Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), titled: En torno a lo político (On the Political), to understand that, as both a political and ethical project, inclusive education interrogates the ethical climate and moral fiber of our time. It challenges us to rethink the forms of relationships that structure the civic fabric and the mechanisms that shape subjectivity. Inclusive education generates alternative relational orders, new frameworks of coexistence, and different mechanisms for the production of subjectivity.
Currently, educational research in our region confirms a significant cycle of reproduction within the field of inclusive education—one that remains tied to the same structures. This aligns with the metaphor proposed by Ocampo (2018) regarding inclusion of the same, referring to an inclusion that compels us to build structures of inclusive assimilation while preserving existing systems of oppression, inequality, domination, segregation, and other forms of exclusion. These dynamics reflect the performative and regenerative functions of power—central characteristics the formats of power. I define formats of power7 as the various manifestations, both material and subjective, through which segregation, structural violence, oppression, domination, and silenced discrimination take shape. These expressions of power manifest in different ways, strategically affecting the lives of social groups and individuals in distinct and deliberate manners.
In that case, it is important to understand that inclusive education is founded on Feuerebach’s eleventh thesis regarding the social—and consequently, educational—transformation of the world. However, its purpose is obstructed by the construction of an empty signifier, which, in turn, affects the very forms of justice that have been co-opted and embedded within the core of advancing capitalism. It is from this very center that a discourse advocating for inclusion and justice is articulated, reaffirming what bell hooks asserts in her remarkable work: El feminismo es para todo el mundo (Feminism is for Everyone), in which she argues that people waste a great deal of time struggling from within the system—within the very structures that generate imperceptible critical knots, ultimately restraining the transformative potential of the world. We do not yet know how to break free from these structures that silently co-opt the free-will of multiple collectives.
In this regard, at the Center for Latin American Studies in Inclusive Education (CELEI), we understand inclusion as a knowledge project in resistance, driven by the pursuit of social justice and the progressive transformation of structures of social and educational participation. Thus, we recognize that social change projects, and indeed the majority of political projects, have exhausted their historical function. Examples of this include socialism and communism. If we were to critically examine the notion of inclusion, we would observe that this approach offers nothing genuinely new in its intellectual assertions, necessitating the emergence of a new ethical awareness to engage in discussions on difference. From another perspective, the term ‘inclusive’ has circulated across various fields, geographies, and knowledge projects, even within academic structures under different names, while still upholding the same objectives of struggle. This point carries significant implications for its epistemological understanding and the foundational qualities upon which its political objectives are built.
The question then arises: when will the new truly begin? Here, once again, it becomes necessary to revisit the insistence I have expressed in various works and lectures—drawing from Braidotti (2009)—which confirms that a large portion of change programs have reached the limits of their historical function, evolving into a deceptive form of social reformism and critical radicalism that merely reaffirms the banality of self-interest as a necessary lesser evil, allowing the organic framework of neoconservative political liberalism to persist in our era. The new fails to materialize in contemporary theoretical proposals. It is essential to subject the syntagmatic order upon which any declarative act in favor of the new is constructed to critical scrutiny.
All of this reaffirms the foundational violence of the new, thereby reinforcing a conception of liberal inclusion, as I usually call it, a matrix regulated by a set of essentialist-individualist principles that give rise to new forms of political opportunism and epistemic reductionism. These elements permeate the educational function, which at times embeds within research practices a series of multi-categorical interests, whose recipients are defined through quota policies—abjects of knowledge—without considering the functioning of social structures and the educational, cultural, and political spatialities, for example.
We are confronted with a critical perspective for understanding how social and school structures function when it comes to inhabiting inclusion. The focus is placed almost exclusively on opening school doors and increasing student enrollment, which, to a certain extent, is a mistaken approach. However, by constitutional right, children and young people in Latin America must participate in some form, stage, or level of education. This leads us to another flawed approach—merely increasing the number of enrolled students does not equate to achieving inclusion. Questioning the operational modalities of school grammar prompts us to examine how these structures produce surplus populations while simultaneously exercising the right to education. At this stage, research highlights a significant gap, which is nothing more than the need to comprehend the underlying mechanics of the multiple expressions of power.
As a knowledge project in resistance, inclusion challenges each of the dominant narratives that seek to capture the essence of inclusive education. Heuristically, it interrogates the narratives driven by psychology, the social sciences, and politics—domains of analysis that confine and diminish its function, treating it as a passive and naive endeavor. This process imposes a strongly essentialist ontological policy, rooted in deficit frameworks and/or semiotic mechanisms that define difference as an absence of reciprocity, thereby reinstating the ontological issue of social groups. Under this paradigm, difference is ultimately reified into constrained identities, powerless forms of otherness, and so forth. It is an operation that reinforces the withdrawal of agency from both individuals and collectives—this is the subjugation that essentialism and individualism impose on multiplicity. Without a doubt, this is a crucial point that must be critically examined, as there is an almost unrestricted tendency to discuss differences while simultaneously imposing subtle forms of differentialism. This point deserves a footnote.
The ontological politics of inclusive education is not concerned with differences or diversity but rather centers its force around singularity, a category with subversive political potential that rescues the essence of being without reifying its power, as the categories of difference and diversity tend to do. At an analytical level, these two categories exhibit a much greater semiotic force and ethos in terms of their signifiers within the intersubjective framework, whereas singularity suffers from a deficit of audibility as a term. Continuing to emphasize differences perpetuates a corpus of flawed analytical and ontological effects, leading to practices of segregation, apartheid, and devaluation based on a logic regulated by the absence of reciprocity. It is necessary to challenge these semiological constructs that function as cognitive failures in understanding the (inter)subjective experience of subject constitution and the multiplicity of particularist modes of subjectivity.
Returning to the political tensions of inclusive education means recognizing the growing demand for subjectivating singularities, which highlight the transition from a substantialist/humanist ontology—centered on deficit, a locus of enunciation, and/or the production of abjects of knowledge—closely linked to the reproduction of certain colonial codes, such as race, among other categorical structures that remain unresolved in the zone of non-being. This geopolitical spatiality exacerbates all forms of domination and oppression in diametric terms. Within it, dehumanization intensifies. I am interested in understanding its constitutive mechanics and the material mechanisms through which it affects the infra-psychic world of being. Thus, the challenge is to overcome this barrier and position the understanding of being and its becoming within a materialist or processual ontology, as Braidotti (2009) proposes. This refers to the infinite production of being—an entity in constant variability that challenges the ways in which justice is constructed from a simplified perspective, as Walzer (1993) argues. To go beyond this, I propose a conception of complex justice, a framework that rejects the logic of universalism as a monolithic structure—a grammar of homogenization—since it acknowledges that such an enterprise denies differences and the specific needs of each collective and its respective connections to the territory to which each singularity belongs. Moreover, it recognizes that universalism is responsible for generating even greater segmentation frameworks.
I thus share one of the central approaches in the thinking of the Italian philosopher and sociologist Mauricio Lazzarato (2006) in: Políticas de lo menor (Policies of the Minor), I will argue that if the goal is to achieve equality and equity while simultaneously reaching everyone—a whole composed of multiple singularities—it will be necessary to establish a fundamental baseline to uphold each right in accordance with the specific needs of each community, following the logic of distributive wholes. This endeavor calls for challenging the distributive paradigm, revealing the inability of societal frameworks to conceive alternative coordinates for intervention in the contemporary world.
Within these proposals, individualism operates as a desirable standard, interwoven with specific logos, brands, and epochal clichés, leading us to reclaim a materialist and nomadic philosophy that inaugurates an alternative conceptual framework. This framework consolidates a structure that enables the transition from an alternative signifier to one that disrupts the functional order of its regulatory units—alter-disciplinarity, since alternative movements tend to replicate hegemonic status, obstructing various counterpoints of opposition. This, in turn, reduces their action to a mere act of resistance against normative structures, often resorting to the same categories—a future that is sustainable and aligned with the demands of each collective. From a Guattarian and Deleuzian perspective, what the alternative seeks to accomplish is the dismantling of such structures—intellectual, social, and political—by urging us to step outside these spatialities. This is synonymous with other modes of meaning-making, allowing for the production of something entirely new. Thus, a third space is inaugurated, a zone that does not emerge from linearity but from nomadism, incompleteness, unpredictability, and transposability, reaffirming the necessity of revisiting the syntagmatic category of political passions, as proposed by Mouffe (2007). The political task of inclusive education is not confined to the reproduction of systematic damage to the self or the erosion of individuation, which, to some extent, serves the functionality of advanced capitalism.
In this context, nomadic subjectivity entails a materialist approach to affectivity and a non-essentialist form of vitalism. It is a realm of multiple mutations that diverge from frameworks of technological adherence, moral imperatives, or neoconservatisms embedded within critical discourses advocating for multiplicity. At this point, we must question what the oppressive alliances are and what set of pressures foster the proliferation of imperceptible actions within knowledge projects aimed at reproducing inequality—preferably—by adhering to the analytical and methodological chains that progressively and silently confine the power of such proposals.
Multiple singularities and the ethics of difference?
Inclusive education, drawing from Braidotti’s (2006) approach, affirms that non-unitary subjectivity is signified in terms of the nomadic, the dispersed, and the fragmentary. This vision, however, remains functional, coherent, and responsible in the liberation of the self and its ethical consciousness. If we were to reflect on the kind of ethics required by inclusive education, we would undoubtedly have to refer to the work of the distinguished Italian-Australian philosopher Rosi Braidotti and the Chicana academic Chela Sandoval, whose seminal work, Metodología de oprimidos (Methodology of the Oppressed), allows us to redefine this constellation of figurations.
In Braidotti (2009), we find the necessity of seeking reactive and alternative responses to the ethical-political rationality that upholds the liberal and individualistic character that currently structures the discourse of inclusion. This is often articulated through naive relational forms that limit the potential to generate other worlds—one of the most significant objectives of inclusivity. Inclusion is both a sign of social disruption and a heterodox marker, and simultaneously, it is an event—something that breaks in, displacing us from conventionality and placing the matrix of essentialist-liberal frameworks under strain, upon which its contemporary mission is structured. It challenges the comprehensive forms of the human being. For this reason, in the case of inclusivity, ontological politics is inscribed within what Ocampo (2018) defines as ontologies of the minor, of multiple singularities, or of the molecular revolution. Within these broader frameworks, inclusion embraces the critical drive and the dislocating impulse to construct other possible worlds that work toward dismantling the enunciative traces of the dominant human subject.
Ethics of difference? We refer to a positive notion of difference, whose analytical figuration and spectral presence place it in proximity to the signifiers of singularity. Its purpose is to subvert and delimit the essentialist-individualist forms that underlie the ontological problem of social groups—also known as substantialist ontology—which marginalizes and reifies large populations, thereby justifying a corpus of public policies that merely reproduce an assimilationist effect and a multi-categorical framework that reinforces their function around passive signifiers of inclusion.
This ontological figuration results in the hierarchization of being, which, within the framework of inclusive education proposals, translates into quota policies or dual systems rather than a genuine transformation of the world. Indeed, Braidotti (2009) asserts that this categorical figuration
This assertion is essential in exposing the blindness of the dialectical pair ‘center/periphery.’ Another analytical issue arises: we continue to conceive the challenges of the field in a linear and categorical manner, in terms of inclusion/exclusion. My relational analysis transcends the Hegelian dialectical figuration, which defines the coordinates of being—lived experience—as existing either inside or outside, as reaffirmed by the dominant research paradigm in the field.
The challenge is to think relationally, to understand how each of these articulations of inclusion/exclusion is interwoven in a multilevel and scalar manner. I bring this up because in countries like Argentina, there is extensive discussion about the notions of the common and the collective. I am intrigued by the idea that, rather than fostering a revolution at the molecular level or embracing the multiple constitutive minorities of the world, we are instead imposing new forms of homogenization on the material and psychological dimensions of these proposals. The conceptual framework of center and periphery applied to our continent is a Eurocentric fiction, detached from an interpretative paradigm rooted in our own peoples, kingdoms, and empires, which predate the arrival of the European to the ancestral cities that formed Abya Yala. The very act of positioning the margin and the center in opposition is a Eurocentric construct that limits the development of more complex understandings of inequality, injustice, redistribution, and related issues.
Therefore, I will argue that the correct ontological figuration that authentic inclusive education demands—one that is diasporic, itinerant, and nomadic; one that creates a new object that belongs to no one—rescues, in the words of Braidotti (2006), individual plurality or, in the words of Ocampo (2019), a multiplicity of singularities. The ontological policy that affirms this approach aligns with the principles of the molecular revolution, that is, the minor—the singularity. In other words, it is a space for the proliferation of a vast array of living entities, created to ensure that singularity materializes within these structures.
The “creative displacements engendered by non-linear interconnections” (Braidotti, 2009, p. 244) lead to the recognition that human behavior does not seek to impose individuality and thereby “anticipate and control everything, but rather to deterritorialize, to open up spaces of fluid movement where the discontinuous subject (unequal to itself, though not fragmented), having ascetically renounced itself” (Braidotti, 2009, p. 245), humbly cultivates its potential without harming itself or others (González, 2018).
Approaches to an Epistemological Understanding of Inclusive Education
Starting from the premise that inclusive education not only generates new knowledge but also offers powerful alternative perspectives on reality, I will argue that its purpose is not solely the assurance of rights but rather their enactment—an epistemological pragmatics that I often reference, concerned with fostering habits of action derived from conceptual frameworks that enhance people’s lives, particularly those affected by the zone of non-being. It distances itself from the signifier that seeks to aggregate and increase the number of students within the schooling structures without addressing the underlying operational logics. It proposes to engage with architectures not conceived by the civic fabric and its corresponding institutional rules of operation, inviting us to step away from the signifier that persistently advocates for equity, justice, and inclusion from within the dominant grammars upon which these declarations are constructed.
The dominant educational grammar operates in opposition to gender, interculturality, and inclusion. If we observe closely, today we speak with great force about the contributions of feminism, social and educational justice, postcolonial thought, and interculturality, giving rise to something even more symptomatic. Particularly within academic structures, a significant number of researchers and educators declare themselves in favor of each of these critical movements merely per se, with the intention of continuing to inhabit and engage with these knowledge structures and remain part of the discourse, often without fully grasping the analytical depth, ethical commitments, and political tensions that these new ways of conceptualizing the world and its structures entail. This (mis)framing establishes correlations between what is articulated, its value frameworks, and its languages of adherence, leading to diametrically different repercussions.
Inclusion dislocates and reshapes the school grammar validated by educational systems as a consequence of Western-centric rationality—an action that challenges the notion of time, urging us to shift from monochrony to heterochrony—multiple heterogeneous temporalities interwoven within the same spatiality. This shift compels us to conceive of a heterotopic space, where teaching coordinates disrupt conventional ways of thinking about education. At this point, it is worth revisiting one of the misguided teleological assumptions embedded in inclusion: the notion that it should consolidate a specialized practice or a fixed, programmatic model for accommodating children with disabilities.
One of the most powerful heuristic properties of inclusive education is its psychic-relational force, which shapes reality. I refer to this as the principle of audibility—a set of coordinates that, by the mere act of articulation, generates a particular ethos capable of mobilizing distinct states of consciousness in its recipients—and the sculptural principle of the world. This is why the qualifier “inclusive” does not function as a paratactic arrangement, merely assembling elements side by side, but rather as an element of disruption and mobilization, enabling us to reclaim the most intrinsic dimension of educational practice—the authentic essence of education.
As a rule, we tend to assume that an inclusive teacher is simply one who respects all students, provides a welcoming environment, and expands opportunities. However, if we closely examine these premises, we will recognize that such prescriptions do not inherently define inclusion. Instead, they align with the core and essential aspects of teaching practice and pedagogy—dimensions that are intimately embedded in the ethical foundation of the teaching profession. What warrants closer examination are the underlying causes that drive the transfiguration, co-optation, and decentering of each of these tensions associated with the qualifier, necessitating a multi-axial analysis that intersects the social, cultural, political, educational, and economic spheres, among others. Inclusion actively shapes reality and the modes of relationship within it, as well as the regulatory frameworks of the (inter)subjective and the semiotic mechanisms that generate specific signs and criteria of legibility for diverse social groups. Let us not forget that inclusive education ultimately raises the fundamental question of the multiple existential modes of human beings.
Indeed, from my theoretical and political standpoint, I identify three central teleological purposes of inclusive education, namely: a) the establishment of a knowledge project in resistance and an analytical strategy aimed at generating new knowledge and perspectives on life, existence, affectivity, subjectivity, desire, and education, among other areas; b) the transformative reconfiguration of reality and of each field of human development, leading to the creation of an alternative world of possibilities; and c) the emergence of a powerful mechanism for recognizing contemporary educational theory and all the constitutive fields of the Sciences of Education.
If we now explore some of the epistemic coordinates of inclusion, I will argue that its heuristic approach is shaped by the postcolonial metaphor of “talking back,” constructing a new vocabulary and a cognitive framework dedicated to understanding the multiplicity of issues that converge at its critical core. In light of this, I assert that inclusion today should be understood as a metaphor, rather than a paradigm or methodology. Why a metaphor? Simply because its analytical coordinates frame its argumentative field as an explanatory construct that resonates widely across different regions of the world, employed by diverse groups in various ways. It establishes multiple points of contact with different struggles for social change in favor of so-called minorities—who, in reality, constitute the majority in the world. To prevent its signifier from becoming restrictive and crystallizing into rigid applications, we must uncover other heuristic and epistemological expressions embedded within this qualifier.
Today, this field is in a phase of discovery. This recognition compels us to consider the index of singularity and situates us within the broader discussion about the specificity of the territory. Although this is a discourse frequently invoked—appearing in postgraduate studies, mass media, and various academic and non-academic events—these argumentative frameworks still fail to concretely define its nature, leaving its singularity index ambiguous. Its syntagmatic structure, as I refer to heuristic constructs composed of two or more terms emerging within the context of so-called postmodernity, operates within a network of relationships and overlaps that share five fundamental challenges already discussed: epistemic, methodological, ontological, morphological, and semiotic/visual deficits.
Based on these characteristics, inclusion—as an analytical category—becomes a strategy for developing deeper interpretative frameworks regarding the multiple manifestations of power, recognizing that each one is endemic and serves as an articulator of social experience. A critical task of inclusive education is to establish the forms of relationship that converge and gain legitimacy within its argumentative framework, examining in depth whether each of these allows for the development of alternative understandings of affectivity, bonding, and relationality, as required by the authenticity of this verb and qualifier. All of this leads us to analyze the rhetorical mechanisms that interpellate the term itself, its object, and its signifier.
From this perspective, it seems essential to revisit the idea of “inclusion of the same,” a metaphor that describes the invariability or the persistent reinforcement by social agents of the very understandings that underpin the notion of liberal inclusion. This notion focuses on reintegrating individuals into the same structures that often serve as the core of various mechanisms of exclusion, marginalization, and barriers to self-development within social and educational trajectories and in the biographical processes of individuals. It is crucial to conduct a thorough examination of how the center-periphery regulatory process is articulated. This metaphor highlights the inability of educational and social structures—as well as curricular, pedagogical, and evaluative frameworks—and the conceptual blindness of their foundational principles to foster alternative educational models and architectures. Addressing these challenges requires confronting complex obstacles conceived as multi-level relational units with a dynamic and intricate order. These obstacles manifest across different dimensions and moments, shaping the schooling experience and social participation of specific groups.
Inclusion signifies the production of alternative worlds. It introduces an alterative signifier of reality and educational praxis, fundamentally challenging pedagogical knowledge. If inclusion generates new perspectives on knowledge, its epistemology constitutes an intellectual, political, and ethical counter-space, illustrating that this category remains in constant pursuit of its meaning. Its domain gives rise to the creation of an “intermediate space of zigzag and non-linear crossings—chaotic, nomadic, yet responsible and committed; cognitively valid, discursive, and materially embedded; coherent without succumbing to instrumental rationality” (Braidotti, 2002, p. 13). In Derridean terms, inclusion can be understood as a philosopheme, as it permeates all fields and matrices of participation in civic life—in life itself—and in social experience.
By asserting that inclusive education is a field shaped by silent forms of essentialisms-individualisms, it faces the challenge of advancing the subversion of
thus imposing an extensive set of categorical frameworks for conceptualizing the singularizing force embodied by various groups. This, in turn, constitutes one of the central foundations for defining the ontological problem of social groups.
Regarding the epistemological dimension of inclusion, I argue that the concepts of difference and the common are inherently relational, residing at the core of this distinctive heuristic domain. If we consider what constitutes the authentic knowledge of this domain, it is plausible to assert that it is a theory that cannot be confined within the paradigms of any single discipline. This argument, in turn, allows us to affirm that its nature is post-disciplinary. At this juncture, I would like to revisit Chambers’ (2009) notion of “the exteriority of theoretical work,” which refers to analytical operations that articulate and/or interpret their field of inquiry, objects, and phenomena from outside and beyond their traditional forms of alloy and components—disciplines, discourses, concepts, theories, methods, subjects, ethical commitments, political projects, and problems, among others, that converge within it.
Its object surpasses all these elements, leading it to employ heuristic forms of translation. In my work, this relates to the creation of conditions of legibility through processes of rearticulation, countering the technique of epistemic applicationism, which confines knowledge and its authenticity-driven impulses within frameworks, languages, and analytical-methodological coordinates that do not inherently belong to it. This aspect is crucial in establishing conditions of legibility for the numerous contributions interwoven into the rhizomatic trajectory of inclusive education, recognizing that it relies on an extensive array of intellectual project rearticulations and theoretical paradigms. While these may not always share a clearly defined theoretical object or language, they succeed in generating new modes of inquiry and application—what Ocampo (2017) refers to as epistemic translation. However, in agreement with Oppermann (2011), the challenge arises of formulating a corpus of new theoretical principles that align with the heterogeneous nature of its constellation of phenomena. At the same time, its object and research praxis reflect a distinctly socio-political character, as it engages with a set of pressing global issues while considering the subjectivizing singularity of its foundational communities.
Its distinctive rhizomatic nature provides meaningful pathways to transcend the presence of “plurality and dissemination, producing differences and multiplicities, making new connections” (Best and Kellner, 1991, p. 99). The rhizomatic refers to the manner in which its body of phenomena circulates through diverse, predominantly resistant, knowledge projects. We are confronted with a singular, multifaceted regionalization, which, in the words of Deleuze and Guattari (1970), “assumes various forms, from the extension of a branched surface in all directions to its concretion in bulbs and tubers. More importantly, the rhizome is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather, directions in movement” (p. 78).
If its intellectual practice signifies a spiral of transformation, adaptation, and the connection of multiple points and diverse forms of alloy, then its organicity materializes through the principle of heterogenesis, unveiling a complex grammatical issue that operates from and toward connection and multiplicity.
Inclusion underscores the diverse meanings it assumes within different discourses, being prominently employed among some of the most influential contemporary critical intellectual movements. The discourse of multiplicity and difference occupies a central place in many feminist, anti-racist, and postmodern narratives and policies, though these have had limited impact on the social relationships that sustain such phenomena.
Synthesizing its main coordinates of constitution and heuristic and/or methodological regulation within the domain, it is assumed that its levels of scientific construction confirm: a) an ontological dimension focused on the minor, that is, the molecular revolution, centered on multiple singularities; b) an epistemological foundation of a post-disciplinary nature8, whose operation is based on diasporism and epistemological nomadism—an order of production or internal laws that define the functioning of the field. This premise leads us to revisit the assertion that inclusive education does not adhere to any specific theoretical or methodological practice. Instead, it emerges from complexes of genealogical entanglements that shape its locus of enunciation (Ocampo, 2017). c) Its conceptual universe arises from the critical core of multiplicity; d) It does not adhere to a clear method but instead documents methodological intersections and contaminations operating under the tactic of abduction.
By way of synthesis, I assert that:
Finally, it should be noted that the epistemological field of inclusive education consists of intricate and intensive analytical-methodological import and export strategies and mechanisms which, without translation, would fail to achieve the full potential of their objectives. Epistemological resources of heterogeneous nature are drawn from other fields, disciplines, and epistemological territories. Undoubtedly, the epistemological project of inclusive education relies on borrowing theoretical tools, conceptual frameworks, and methodological resources from other disciplines. However, its constructive processes are not limited to or reduced to an arbitrary system of borrowing; rather, they operate through conditions of translation and/or rearticulation, redirecting its energies toward new directions.
The epistemology of inclusive education—hereinafter, the system of updating/translation of contemporary educational theory—is framed within the epistemologies of dispersion. Hence, its order of production is expressed through dissemination and diasporic movement. Its connections are sustained through mobile flows, giving rise to expressions of interweaving, hybridization, and plasticity, among others, from which new, more solid flows emerge—flows that can “connect and disconnect with any other, creating or annihilating” (Esperón, 2016, p. 22). Each of its objects, methods, influences, theories, ethical commitments, political projects, subjects, territories, disciplines, concepts, bodies of knowledge, and discourses—an infinite multiplicity of epistemic singularities—configures a theoretical and methodological structure composed of a system of constellations. It explicitly forms an unstable assemblage from which the irruption of the new—chaos—emerges.
The adjective “inclusive” operates in terms of an “open trajectory,” which refers to its most significant epistemological property: movement. It constitutes a body of knowledge in continuous construction, transformation, and development, evolving as a process that integrates the social and political within a unique configuration of subjectivity.
Inclusion, as a knowledge project in resistance, an analytical strategy, and a critical praxis, consciously creates conditions for liberation and deep affective processes—fostering the creation of a new form of subjectivity—which, in turn, result in alternative historical positions that challenge the dominant social order. It generates a form of knowledge capable of breaking with the corpus of specific social and ideological formations that structure deep-seated oppressive processes, contexts, and dynamics that inhibit self-development and reinforce essentialist frameworks. These structures are dedicated to dismantling their own logic of meaning. It intervenes within, from, and through these formations, exploring new connections and broader social and political objectives, sharpening a dialectical engagement with various ideological forms of liberation and consciousness-raising aimed at sculpting transformation.
Conclusions
Inclusive education, as a category of analysis, allows us to investigate and understand the specificity and fabric of our time. At this point, it is recognized as an essentially unconditioned category. Corona (2018) explains that its ontology operates as a system for refocusing critical theory in response to the diversity of constitutive problems of the present. In this regard, it aligns with the principle of negativity, understood as a critical desire for destabilization and continuous transformation of the intellectual systems involved in the study of justice, human resistance politics, inclusion, and the coordinates for constructing a present that coheres with the issues of the zone of non-being. Inclusive education is, in itself, a negative desire to conceptualize the contemporary world—it becomes an insistence on transformation. “It reveals to us the space of freedom that we can still enjoy and the changes that can still be made in our lives” (Corona, 2018, p. 318).
The ontology of the present constitutes another critical task faced by inclusive education. In part, it creates an ontological figuration of contemporary time—an endeavor that revives Kant’s fundamental question regarding what we are in this moment. It is a framework of space-time coordinates of an evanescent order, whose deep regulatory structure takes on the challenge of offering a specific diagnosis of the political, cultural, social, and educational conjuncture. At this point, the interpretative frameworks of inclusive education expose their own limitations. The ontology of the present, as an analytical practice, seeks to destabilize in order to counter-argue the function of cognitive maps—theories—that shape the configuration of educational subjects, those
The heuristic framework of inclusive education, in its effort to construct a knowledge system relevant to the present, must be capable of offering an analysis of the general conditions that constrain the cognitive mechanisms of an era. Its epistemological singularity evolves into a complex system of thought regarding the coordinates that shape the cultural framework in which we exist. Indeed,
Viewed in this way, inclusive education is, in itself, an ontology of the present, shaped by a set of folds and forms of subjectivity production that become a historical form of knowledge. Its depth and complexity are defined by the objective of reconfiguring the matrix that constitutes its modes of verification. Inclusion is a space of knowledge in constant transformation, reconfiguration, and deformation9—it is a domain of reactions, forms, and inventions of what is possible. The ontology of the present interrogates the coordinates of relation and implication within the diverse temporal frameworks legitimized by the universal/monochronic order of educational action. It articulates a spatialized vision of the educational event, wherein “ontological condensations (discursive, dispositional, and subjective) function as conditions of possibility of the present” (Perea, 2011, p. 21), disrupting the logic of contemporary pedagogical thought production.
The objectives of the ontology of the present, affirmed by inclusive education, align with the creation of knowledge that enables the multiplicity of singularities—an ontological politics of the minor—to exist and articulate its interventionist-creative force within an entirely distinct space: an out-of-series or heterotopic space, a third space (Ocampo, 2017). Inclusive education unfolds through a multi-scalar shift—it is a misconception to assert that it undergoes only a single transformation—that affects the ontological, epistemological, political, morphological, methodological, visual, temporal, and spatial dimensions. In short, it permeates all levels of world regulation. The theoretical contribution of the ontology of the present operates within what Spivak (2006) refers to as a double bind, initiating both a historical critique and a critique of educational practice and cultural analysis.
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Derechos
Artículo de investigación / Research Article / Artigo de pesquisa
Conflicto de intereses: Los autores han declarado que no existen intereses en competencia
