Rethinking Inclusion through Utopia: Critique and Project

Abstract

This article examines inclusion as a test case for utopian intentionality, understood as a specific mode of engaging critically and constructively with the present (Ricœur, Mannheim). Grounding inclusion in the ontological relationality and constitutive vulnerability of human beings (Honneth, Maillard, Pelluchon), the article argues that inclusion qualifies as a utopian device only under two conditions: it must not be instrumentalised for ends extrinsic to itself, such as mere social cohesion or systemic stability; and it must not, in turn, instrumentalise the subjects it addresses, who are to be recognised as ends in themselves. Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s typology of oppression, Ruth Levitas’s critique of the discourses of inclusion, and Miranda Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice, the article shows how inclusive practices can betray their own normative promise while retaining its rhetoric. It further argues that genuine inclusion does not suppress conflict but enables it, distinguishing conflict from violence. Inclusion thus emerges not as a state to be achieved or a regulative idea, but as an unending, self-revising practice of justice oriented toward a good place that does not yet exist.