The term “inclusive education” draws attention to ideological perspectives in democracy and participation emphasizing values strongly associated with what is socially constructed as being “good”. The inclusive mission can be seen as a longing for justice in an almost Messianic perspective, unreachable and yet worth striving for. As Derrida asserts, such a mission depends on the faith of the other, on a promise of something good to come. Structuralist way of handling the world as duality is followed by regarding heterogeneity where men and women, disabled and disabled, mainstream and deviant are dissected in terms of multiple identities or intersectional relations of power dimensions. Post-structuralist ideas opens up for doubting former beliefs that are taken for granted as being truths. From a Foucauldian perspective power relations implied in concepts as “special needs” are discussed in terms of transparency and governmentality. Mediating social values, promoting social competence and regarding school as an arena for social gathering could be perceived as confounding the social with the moral. According to Lévinas understanding the other, without abolishing the otherness in the other, opens up for deconstruction of ethics. Participating or being part of the whole is a phrase that raises questions about totality as a closed entity consistent with Derrida as well as the thoughts of Laclau and Mouffe. In conclusion considering inclusive education as a philosophical issue enriches and widens the field beyond the eye of the beholder putting focus in concealed fissures and breaks in structures, socially created.

The presentation is based on a study of the processes where a group of teachers constructed meanings regarding inclusive education. By catching linguistic dynamics and variations, i.e. by regarding that, which is spoken in a perspective of differences and anomalies, I want to discover how different discursive expressions appeared, were formed and transformed during conversation.

The analysis perceived a substantial need for philosophy to deal with the ethics of education in a globalized world and scrutinize the heredity of taken for granted values. Deconstructing destabilizes complicit practices and excessive differences rather than unveiling structures. Seeing contradictions, breaks, weaknesses, aporias are for Derrida the essence for responsibility. Any decision made by teachers implies a dilemma, a dual obligation, whose features are contradictory as well as incongruous. There is no essential core in concepts used in the rhetoric of inclusive education. Regarded as empty signifiers they have to be filled with meanings to fulfil the idea of rhetoric as a generic phrase for pulling together multiple demands in order to change the situation.