Blameless responsibility: Schooling,selection,and the governance of possibilities

Abstract

Over recent decades, the governance of schooling has relied less on deviance and sanction, while inclusion, diversity, and personalization have gained institutional prominence. This article argues that such a shift has not weakened selection but has reconfigured its mechanisms. It introduces the notion of blameless responsibility to capture a mode of governance based on selective anticipation, through which expected capacities, presumed vulnerabilities, and projected trajectories are assessed in advance. Responsibility concerns less what students have done than what they might not be able to sustain. Assessment, guidance, and inclusion policies may thus produce formally included subjects who remain exposed to shifting thresholds of adequacy. Responsibility is also distributed: teachers and school staff are required to make and justify selective decisions without an imputable act and without an explicit sanctioning boundary. The concept makes analytically visible forms of selection in which deviance no longer functions as the dominant regulatory grammar, and decisions remain difficult to attribute.