Reconfiguring inclusion beyond neoliberal capture

This paper presents a critical analysis of the UK policy guidance: The Equality Act 2010 and Schools. This policy guidance is a central (and centralised) feature of England’s attempts at inclusive education, founded on the notion of certain determinate characteristics, such as race, religion, disability, etc. It is argued here that this limits the possibilities for inclusion through opaquely determining what it is to be human and – for those with protected characteristics – less than human. This paper therefore foregrounds posthumanism as a response to the convergence of basic anti-discrimination law with disciplinary inclusion, arguing that inclusion needs to be reconfigured locally as a democratic and emancipatory ethico-onto-epistemological project that recognises the embodied, entangled and relational as an alternative to disembodied human capital formation. This paper looks to motivate the thinking of school leaders and practitioners in terms of how institutional inclusion informed by posthumanism could be developed; one that moves beyond the individualised, ahistorical and decontextualised person of bounded protected characteristics.