Hi there 👋 I recently saw Wake Up Dead Man – A Knives Out Mystery. It was a good film, and one thing in particular stayed with me: the Lazarus door to the Wicks' mausoleum. It took me until the day after to figure out why I couldn't let go of that door. A Lazarus door is a door that can only be opened from the inside. To me, this is the perfect metaphor for how inclusion works.
Inclusion – a Door That Can Only Be Opened from Inside the Norm
As someone who has been using a wheelchair for almost 40 years, I am more than used to being on the outside waiting to be let in. It is like looking at a door where the handle is on the inside. Inside the norm.
You can stand outside and ask, demand, cite rights and legislation, file complaints, design special aids, but you cannot open the door yourself. The door only opens when someone inside sees you and decides to turn the handle. Tanya Titchkosky has named the position outside the door the "Not Yet" [1], where belonging is contingent, conditional, and placed in the future tense.
Inclusion is widely treated as an unquestioned good [2]. That's exactly what makes it hard to see as an in/out structure. But this is how ableism works: it is invisible to the ones it serves. It has little to do with the one turning the handle, the includer, or with the included. It is structural, and the dominant structures dictate the conditions for and direction of the door's opening.
Nonclusion ≠ Inclusion ≠ Non-Inclusion
In our research, one of the most frequent and consequential patterns is that of "norm and deviation". This is what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson named the "normate" [3], the assumed default body that design (quietly) takes as its standard. This is an image with an imagined normal person, and then those who deviate from that norm. Its presence can be seen in texts as "others", in graphics as wheelchair signs, and as separate routes in the built environment.
Too much effort is spent trying to fix the drawbacks of the inside-outside thinking, while still operating in that same paradigm. We are exploring nonclusion as a way to move beyond the norms and deviations, the experiences of "us" and "them", and the inside-outside dynamics. This is done by resisting categorising bodies and roles as normal and abnormal. Instead, nonclusive design is accomplished by focusing on what is available to a person in a situation, for instance, through a shift from person to function [4].
In the case of the Lazarus door, nonclusive design doesn't mean an attempt to put a handle on the outside to complement the one on the inside. It means a refusal of the door itself.
The choice of the prefix "non" is intentional. Compare it to the word "nonviolent". Nonviolence is not violence-avoidance. It is its own positive practice with its own ground. The same goes for nonclusion: it is not inclusion-avoidance. It is its own ground, meaning not to shut in/out bodies and roles at all.
What happens when you refuse to categorise bodies and say that all bodies already belong is that the gaze turns away from the body towards the context and what the situation offers. In other words, we focus less on "who" is expected or allowed, and more on what is available to a person.
When we present and talk about nonclusion, the most common mishearing is that we are saying "non-inclusion." But this is not at all what we are saying. Non-inclusion still operates within the inside-outside, with-without paradigm. This mishearing is a sign of the strength of the current "norm and deviation" way of thinking.
What nonclusion hints towards is a new paradigm where everyone already belongs. I already exist, and so do you. Thus, we are all already part of human variation. Our rights are innate, not something to be earned, requested, or provided.
In such a world, no sign needs to say who an exit is for, and no one stands outside waiting to be included. We are already in the room. The question then becomes who is not present, and why? And the role of design changes from "Who should we provide access to?" to "What does this situation offer?".
Your Turn
Does the Lazarus Door metaphor work for you? Have you seen this?
Let's keep this discussion going 😊
Notes and References
Thanks to all of you who repost, comment and share your thoughts and examples! 🌸
This piece builds on findings from our research, where we investigate situation-based categorisation and nonclusive design through citizen science and field observations.
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References
- Titchkosky, T. (2011). The question of access: Disability, space, meaning. University of Toronto Press.
- Hedvall, P-O & Ericsson, S. (2024). The Problem with "Inclusion"? It Is Done to Someone by Someone. UD2024.
- Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Columbia University Press.
- Hedvall, P-O et al. (2022). Towards 3rd Generation Universal Design: Exploring Nonclusive Design. UD2022.
