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We undertake a genealogical critique to undermine the very noble but hardly questioned implementation of inclusive education in Indonesia, less to identify dubious neo-colonial powers of particular groups, than to deconstruct ill-defined understandings of schooling as a process of ‘normalisation’ of the ‘abnormals’. We approach inclusive classes through Foucault's concept of Heterotopia, a space which is deviant from the norm. Instead of questioning inclusive education as a heterotopian way of schooling only, we contest regular schooling itself and the power normalisation. Along a second Foucauldian concept of Heterochronia we connect historical insights of seating Indonesian children at a regular school desks in 1920 with the training of children with special needs to be seated in Indonesian disability centres 2020. We argue that ‘normalisation’ as such can hardly be critiqued, because it is an existing social and institutional normality. But taking critique as a conflict between colonial, globalising and even humanitarian forces, enables a Foucauldian analysis of normalising technologies of education and of inclusive education in particular.

This chapter lays out the conceptual foundations for this book. Grounded in the tradition of disability studies, the authors describe their orientation to ‘inclusion’ and the entangled institutions of general and special education. They explain their attachment to the many ‘articulations’ of inclusive practices rather than engage in discourses of ‘implementation’ which inadvertently divide world regions. In doing so, they briefly trace the evolution of inclusion as a global concept and its relation to conditions in different parts of the world. They subsequently offer an introduction to the different chapters in the book.