Concrete Utopias and Crip Futurities: Reimagining Special Education through Blochian Hope

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: From ‘SPED’ to Solidarity: Unforgetting Exclusion and Imagining Disability-Just Futures in K-12 Education

Abstract

This conceptual paper draws on Ernst Bloch’s theory of concrete utopia to reimagine the future of special education and inclusion. Rather than viewing inclusion as a technical end state, I frame it as an open and collective process grounded in Bloch’s notions of latency, tendency, and the “not-yet.” Integrating insights from critical disability studies and crip theory, I explore how speculative and materialist approaches can disrupt normative timelines and developmentalist assumptions that dominate special education. Through philosophical analysis and interpretive engagement with educational and disability scholarship, I argue for a futuring grounded in lived struggle, radical imagination, and relational transformation. This paper contributes a hopeful and historically conscious reorientation of what inclusive education could become.

Author

• Joseph R Passi, Purdue University Northwest