Indifference to Difference or in Deference to Difference: A Treatise of Inclusion

This paper is a critical investigation of the concept of inclusion. It argues that the alternatives or disjuncts in the strict or exclusive disjunction are mutually exclusive: either we exclude, or we include – no middle ground. The choice to either totally exclude or totally include is a political exercise of freedom of being indifferent to differences or being deferent to differences respectively. In this context, inclusion is viewed as a critical attitude towards pluralism that accepts, but not without deep examination, the breaches of totality and the advances of the radical alterity. The paper begins with [1] a careful examination of the politics of exclusion that exposes and discusses exclusive tendencies of some laws, systems, policies, views, traditions, cultures, and practices. The succeeding parts deal heavily with [2] the navigation of inclusive spaces as a response to conditional or quasi-inclusive spaces, [3] moral justifications of inclusion using Immanuel Kant and John Rawls’ ethical frameworks, and [4] a thoughtful exploration of the role of language in the inclusion of the alterity in a pluralistic age in the lenses of Emmanuel Levinas and Paulo Freire. The paper ends with [5] an articulation of the logic of exclusion-inclusion towards the dialectics of inclusion as a necessarily transforming or transformative process - the means and the end. Save a few, most of the concrete historical examples that are [re]presented in the discussions are admittedly landmark Philippine jurisprudence. Even the laws that are [re]cited never escaped the Philippine context.