Beating the barrel of inclusion: Cosmopolitanism through Rabelais and Rancière – A response to John Adlam and Chris Scanlon

Abstract

This article is a response to John Adlam and Chris Scanlon's argument about refusal and exclusion in social care services, as explored in this special issue. It builds on the distinction they establish, in reference to the figure of Diogenes, between metropolitan and cosmopolitan models of inclusion, by examining these models through the work of two writers: Rabelais and Rancière. Rabelais, the sixteenth century novelist, compared his writing to the actions of Diogenes when the latter rolled and beat his barrel around the city walls of Corinth, in parodic imitation of the citizens' busy work, preparing for religious warfare. Through this comparison, Rabelais puts into question claims about the justice of colonisation as a strategy to institute ‘the common good’, in the form of an inclusive (Christian) social order. In a move with certain parallels, Jacques Rancière, the contemporary French philosopher, explores the ‘hatred of democracy’ which underpins endeavours to make people equal, through state intervention, notably education. His concept of equality as a starting premise, rather than an end point, allows an exploration of the perverse effects of the system of education, and its claims to ‘include’ while continuously identifying the failures of the excluded. The psychosocial dimension of these dynamics are explored by drawing on several Lacanian ideas, including the subject's fear of indistinction from the (m)other, and the desire to secure social identity through founding exclusions and prohibitions. The conclusion explores how Lacan's notion of traversing the fantasy, as the aim of psychoanalytic treatment, bears relation to the concept of cosmopolitanism, including how such a traversing might be lived by education and social care practitioners.