Table Of ContentThe Law and Politics of Inclusion
On the one hand, inclusion constitutes a powerful framework of political agency,
as people can gain access to forms of recognition granting legal protection
and social visibility. On the other hand, inclusion requires their adherence to
fixed matrices incorporating specific and limited forms of life. This opposition
reflects a similar division within the academic field: between liberal advocates of
inclusion and those who regard it as a form of assimilation, where differences are
absorbed and tempered.
Uncovering the deficiencies in both viewpoints, this book analyzes inclusion
by attending to the active role of subjects looking for inclusion, and m obilizing
inclusive processes. Inclusion is thus reconceived as an ongoing, engaging
movement of category-production, according to which there is no straightforward
opposition between effective inclusion and assimilation. The book thus draws
the idea of inclusion out of this opposition in order to delineate a form of p olitical
connectedness based on smaller social networks of solidarity that, although
entailing some sort of normativity, are nevertheless characterized by fluidity
and proximity. In this way, inclusion comes to be more productively, and more
plausibly, reframed: as a web in which inclusive processes appear as moments of
the renegotiation and rearticulation of a subjectivity in constant flux.
Valeria Venditti is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Philosophy at the U niversity
College Cork. Her research revolves around the issues of legal inclusion and
political engagement. She got her Ph.D. at Sapienza, University of Rome and
carried out her research in collaboration with Universiteit Antwerpen, Glasgow
University and Charles University in Prague.
The Law and Politics
of Inclusion
From Rights to Practices of
Disidentification
Valeria Venditti
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 Valeria Venditti
The right of Valeria Venditti to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction: the (incorpo)reality of inclusion 1
1 Model 1: opportunity-oriented policies 12
2 Model 2: capability-based policies 25
3 Model 3: category-protecting policies 47
4 Millennial rights: a political revolution from the courts 61
5 Legal looping effect 83
6 Difference dissimulated: politics of marginalities 109
Bibliography 127
Index 137
Acknowledgments
This book started life as a Ph.D. project on unspeakability and marginalization.
Its pages are a sort of time travel into reflections and ideas that led me to discover
new paths and imagine alternative ways to think of politics and its corollaries, to
inhabit the social space and to take part in everyday exchanges.
I want to thank Colin Perrin and Nicola Sharpe, who kindly (and patiently!)
followed me in the production of this text.
Writing this book would have not been possible without the guidance of my
mentors and the support of friends and colleagues. I express all my gratitude
to Vittorio Bufacchi, who believed in me and my project and offered me a
fresh start, a new beginning in the academia. Always kind and attentive, he
welcomed me and made me feel at home in a brand-new life. I owe a great
debt to Virginio Marzocchi, who, notwithstanding our theoretical differences
and my idiosyncrasies, sustained me with grace and strength during my whole
academic career. Thanks to Caterina Botti, who initiated me to the academic
life and allowed me to actively take part in her classes and seminars. Thanks to
scholars and friends who taught me many things: Piergiorgio Donatelli, Olivia
Guaraldo, George Pavlakos, Frederik Swennen. Thanks to my colleagues and
friends who have inspired my thinking, answered my calls for help and dis-
cussed ideas and questions: Peter Agha, Lorenzo Bernini, Michele Spanò,
Vincenzo Rosito, Francesca Tullii and her sparkling mind. Special thanks
go to Marco Goldoni, valuable ally and sweet companion, and to Andrea
Salvatore with his enigmatic, steady presence in my life, inside and outside the
academia.
The development of this book has benefited from the generosity, time and
love of many people. Laura, Vincenzo and Maria Laura who still put up with
me. My brother Lorenzo, an irreplaceable figure in my life, who keeps teaching
me many and many things. Rita, Anna and Valter who cooked a lot, sent me
letters, sang Chinese songs on the beach, told me stories about their adventur-
ous lives and give me lots of love. My cousins Ludovica and Giorgia, old souls
under the guise of young girls in flower. My friends since ever Giorgia, Federica,
Valentina, Fabio and Fabio. Thanks to Arianna, Enrica and Giulia, Margherita
and Sara whose presence brightens up my days.
Acknowledgments vii
Thanks to Mariano, a great mentor, a lover, a friend, an inspiring scholar, an
amazing teacher, a special reader, a tidy housemate, a glass of natural wine, an
entry point, a whimsical point of view, a mismatch, a matchstick, a madrigal, a
noise, a pointed nose, a corn can, a fold, a boon, a brown spot, a poem, a trip
to Cilento, a walk on the grass, a statue in the Middelheim, an éclair, an éclat, a
vibration, an endless desire. A life.
This work was supported by the Irish Research Council, Post-doctoral Fellow-
ship Project-ID GOIPD/2018/360.
Introduction
The (incorpo)reality of inclusion
Social change happens regularly, on a daily basis, but changes can hardly be
taken at face value. In particular, one can hardly measure the progressive or
conservative character of change against the institutional texts or dynamics that
bring it about. There is something that cannot be discovered in them, something
that tends to be left unspoken. The thrust of this work is how the language of
institutions allows for the articulation of forms of life and how certain forms
are articulated to the disadvantage of others. This kind of question cannot be
tackled in the abstract, for it requires alertness and sensitivity to historical and
social processes that do not lend themselves to easy observation. Indeed, the type
of approach that is necessary to undertake this study requires “a critical break
with primary self-evidences”, which is meant to “neutralize the effects of natu-
ralization” (Bourdieu 1998:182). The historic lens that this work adopts is the
specific, circumstantial relation between the political and the legal spheres, one
that has been changing significantly since the 1990s. My main claim will be that,
today’s specific relation between law and politics, as well as the transformations
that are affecting both policy frameworks and legal measures ignite mechanisms
of social semantics whereby inclusion is turned into assimilation. A related claim
will be that assimilation takes a specific shape in light of which the institutional
language granting legal speakability (that is, a situation in which a given entity or
problem can be accounted for with recourse to the official l anguage of the law)
requires forms of life to conform to it in order for them to be verbalized and
then to exert effects of reality on the institutional semantics. As I will extensively
discuss, the particular way in which the law works in today’s societies of the
Global North turns forms of inclusion into wide mechanisms of naturalization
operating through narrow and reified categories of different types.
The range of institutional dynamics that I will look at comprises different
sorts of inclusive policies. I decided to deal with the issue of inclusion because
it is one of the prime instruments of democratic politics by which governments
try to extend the range of people involved in ordinary politics. An issue that will
emerge, although it will not be the focus of this work, is that inclusion today
does not come in its traditional guise (civil society engagement, participation
in public debates, contested elections) but morphs into the legal recognition
of well-defined strands of the population characterized as groups in the light
