The idea of exclusion calls up almost immediately the image of putting
someone or something outside, that is to say, in the exterior of our
orbit, and, accordingly, in the situation of being considered and treated
as an object. This image is only apparently simple. It contains, at the
minimum, a reference to exclusion as a process. From here we can see
that the excluded person or thing is in reality the effect of a process
of expulsion of which we form a part. The excluded person results from
the effect of many interwoven relationships, and also from a will or
logic of exclusion. The exclusion of the excluded person does not depend
on him, but on those who exclude him. That is to say, someone can
conduct himself in an objectively undesirable manner, (by being rude, for
example) without therefore being placed in the exterior and treated as an
object. In fact, when we reproach conduct we consider improper in a
child or student, we don't place him outside our human project
(humanity), but simply reproach or question him within what we consider
to be legitimate parameters.

The logic (or will) of exclusion is capable of excluding something as
well. A characteristic example is Nature. The modern sensibility tends
to understand, and thus make it possible to treat, Nature as something
exterior to ourselves, as a mere field of operations for productive
technology. The idea that we form a substantial part of it, and
therefore need to take care of it, as a fundamental aspect of our
possibility of life, is quite recent (as recently as the 1970s,
ecologists were viewed as an exaggerating minority.) Even today, in
reports financed by international agencies and shown on TV worldwide, the
planet is promoted as a common home. The intention is good, but it's
enough to substitute "house" or "roof" for "home" to see that "home" does
not encompass, at least in everyday language, the idea that we are
fundamentally and unavoidably part of it; and the phrase carries with it
a certain air of objectification, that is, of placing something
definitively outside. To put it directly: it is not the same thing to
affirm that we share a home with a rabbit or an oak tree, as it is to
recognize that the rabbit and the oak are part of ourselves, and that my
behavior toward them constitutes a part of what they are as well. Or in
other words, that the oak, the rabbit, and I are different aspects of the
same thing and that we need (demand) each other mutually.

To exclude contains, therefore, the will to place something or someone
outside of ourselves, with the intention or declared or unconscious of
treating it as an object.

Seen in this way, to exclude is not the opposite of to include, as seems
to be many people's opinion. The opposite of exclusion is not a society
in which everyone has a place. It is possible to include many people and
treat them as objects. This can be seen in the relationship between a
couple. Or in the apparent familiarity between children in a family. Or
in the control which adolescents allow their parents. The most visible
example of an inclusion which includes the large-scale treatment of
others as objects is the wage relation (capitalist exploitation). It's
true that the worker collaborates, but he always remains apart (distant,
outside) from the business owner and the logic of accumulation. The
workers are a medium, an object, for the accumulation of capital and for
monetary gain. Think, to give only one example, of the workers in
sweatshops, so prevalent in Mexico.

It might be useful, even in notes as introductory as these, to examine
more closely the situation of inclusion (cooperation) offered by the wage
relation (capital/workforce). In this relation, we have pointed out,
workers are distanced, placed outside of a (capitalist) project of
humanization, and rendered invisible as human beings. In practice, they
are then revisibilized as factors of accumulation and profit. In this
process, the components of the mechanism of exclusion are prominent:
exteriorization or objectification, invisibilization and
revisibilization. It will be useful to remember this image. The logic
of accumulation keeps the workers from giving character, their character,
to the productive process, in which they are or constitute a fundamental
part. Work, for its part, has a decisive significance for their personal
lives (since without work, the worker dies). Thus, while subjected to
the capitalist organization of production, the workers cannot give their
own character to a basic aspect of their existence and lives.

If exclusion, according to this comment, is not directly opposed to
inclusion, because it is possible to exclude while including, what is the
opposite of exclusion?

The opposite of exclusion is participation. If the worker is permitted
not only to cooperate, but also to participate, in the production
process, she will then be able to lend her personal character to the work
process and to the product she helps to generate. Her work will be
creative. In Spanish, "participation" is expressed in different ways, or
with different levels of meaning. The people say, "When it rains,
everybody gets wet," and this can be translated to mean that whoever goes
out into the street or the fields when it's raining participates in the
getting-wet, although it wasn't his idea and it hadn't figured in his
plan for the day. This is the weakest sense of the idea of
participation: something that affects someone without his having had
anything to do with (or any will toward) the occurrence in question.

We encounter the second sense of participation when we attend a party
(especially one to which we haven't been invited.) As soon as we enter,
we try to get the greatest benefit possible out of the event. We eat, we
drink, we gamble, we flirt with the lady of the house, etc. Here to
participate means to take something, to obtain something which we think
will be beneficial to us. In Latin America everyone has had the sad
experience of the political parties' participation in the electoral booty
(public administration.)

The third form corresponds to the strong sense of participation. We can
use the same example of the party. To this party we can contribute
(bring) our most celebratory mood, a guitar, poetic sensibilities,
cheerful spirits, and a willingness to help and share in the pleasure of
a gathering which is part of a common task: that of making the party
enjoyable for everyone. Here, "to participate" means to give our support
to the party, to a common project, so that it will be a success. We can
translate this another way: in this last situation, we bring (our)
character to the party, we leave our mark as subjects, without therefore
laying (exclusive) claim to the common project.

Now we can see that to participate, in its strong sense, means to put
ourselves in a position of support, as the subjects of a common project.

To exclude, in contrast, consists in impeding others from participating
as subjects in the common project. Some examples of common projects are:
the construction of humanity; for religious believers, construct God's
Kingdom; for parents and children, the formation and preservation of
their family; for neighbors, maintaining neighborhood security and
controlling the proper use of municipal funds; for citizens, the creation
of a Mexico for the Mexicans; for all of these (and for all the rest of
humanity) the preservation of the conditions that allow the reproduction
of life on the planet. In every one of these projects and tasks
(processes) the human being can leave his mark (give assistance
autonomously from within himself), or in other words, behave as a
subject.

Exclusion also expresses itself, although with destructive effects, in
exploitation, discrimination, inferiorization, prevention, withholding,
etc. - in all of these diverse forms of domination. The will of
exclusion does not consist in simply pushing the other outside, but in a
relation whose sense is that of discrimination/domination. Exclusion,
therefore, comes from that person or thing which has the power or ability
to exclude. And what is excluded, in every instance, is the ability of
the other (that is, the person who is socially constructed as the other)
to attain her full stature as a subject. Exclusion consists of not
wanting to recognize, or being incapable of recognizing, the condition
(dignity) of a subject in the other, the different, the diversity of
human experience.

After all, whoever denies others (for economic, libidinous, political, or
cultural reasons) a recognition of their stature as subjects, diminishes
in the same motion his own condition as a subject and fails to attain his
inherent human stature. Exclusion thus manifests itself as an
inappropriate and dehumanizing form of the exercise of power; and as an
anti-spiritualism (that is, as a logic which deprives people of life, as
something which, by definition, kills.)

To end this sketch, perhaps it would be helpful to recall an image which
some people have succeeded in turning into a topic of discussion. For
them, in the current conditions of exclusion under which the economies
and societies of Latin America are suffering (globalist globalization and
neoliberal), those who have employment today (that is, those who are
somehow useful for the transnational accumulation of capital and for
profitable business) are privileged, because at least they have not been
excluded. This perception is profoundly (and because of its effects,
perversely) wrong. In the first place, because it fails to understand
the exclusionary relationship as a negation of subjectivity
(antispiritualism) which can still demand cooperation: in other words, an
exclusionary inclusion based in domination, extreme repression,
overexploitation, and silencing. In the second place, because it impedes
the analysis of the various figures and social logics whose form
exclusion has historically assumed in Latin America (ethnocentrism and
racism toward indigenous people, African-Americans, and Asians, sexism
and patriarchism toward women, youth, and old people, oligarchy and
militarism, which affect people both as citizens and as members of a
community, scientific and academic snobbery toward the knowledge of
ordinary people, clericalism toward religious believers, etc) by reducing
it all to the current hurricane of globalization. This deviation is more
serious when those who are proclaiming it are theologians, because among
us these sociohistorical expressions of dominance are forms of idolatry
and have taken concrete shape in the dominant, idolatrous institutions.
And, above all, this image hides the fact that present labor conditions
(informal or salaried in Latin America) for the poorest among us - rural
dwellers, women, Afro-Americans, original nations, sweatshop workers -
are dominated by precarious uncertainty, by anxiety, and by the tendency
to form closed circuits of poverty, with no hope of escape. It is in
this that exclusion, finally, consists: in our being placed (or in our
placing others) in situations where all hope is lost; and by hope I mean
the ability to resist, to organize, and to believe that it is always
possible to achieve, through testimonies and acts of liberation, the
status of subjects.

Here we'll mention only the most perverse immediate political effect of
the model which says that those who have a job can consider themselves
privileged with respect to the excluded, understanding the excluded,
ideologically, as those without jobs, useless or disposable because they
also don't consume appropriately. If this were the case, what would
inclusion consist of? In inserting oneself into overexploitation, into
the false feminization of the labor market, into the circuits which are
tearing Nature apart? In having access to the market of shiny, solid,
luxurious automobiles, in consuming destructive drugs, in consoling
oneself in the circles of idolatry, racism, and patriarchy? It's obvious
that the political outcry for inclusion does not include these demands.
At least, not for most ordinary people. In the language of the project
of liberation, when we talk about inclusion, this demand also demands the
construction of another quality of existence. It demands an existence in
which one feels good about producing (self-esteem). That is, in which we
are permitted to contribute toward creating economic and cultural
conditions in which each and every person has the opportunity to attain
her stature and dignity as a subject (liberatory and creative autonomy
and self-esteem).

In synthesis, to include consists in contributing from ourselves so that
others can be subjects, and in others contributing toward us so that we
too can attain our full stature. The capitalist market, although it does
not have an "exterior", is not inclusive in many and various forms. But
currently, neither are the authoritarian family, the conservative and
rigidly hierarchical churches, restrictive democracies, or the false
culture of minorities. In the Gospels, the central antihumanism
contained in the processes of exclusion is admirably and completely
presented in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Guadalajara, April 2000

References:

Duque, Jose (editor). Por una sociedad donde quepan todos. Cuarta
Jornada Teologica de Cetela, CETELA/DEI, San Jose de Costa Rica, 1996.

Gallardo, Helio: Habitar la tierra, A.P.D., Bogota, Colombia, 1996.

Richard, Pablo: Teologia de la solidaridad en el contexto actual de
economia neoliberal de libre mercado, en El Huracan de Globalizacion (F.
J. Hinkelammert, editor), DEI, San Jose de Costa Rica, 1996.