Conference Program

In contemporary educational discourse, meritocracy is frequently presented as a neutral principle meant to reward talent, effort, and individual commitment. Yet a growing body of critical scholarship has shown how meritocratic systems are embedded in normative assumptions about productivity, autonomy, and performance. These assumptions reflect broader socio-economic structures shaped by neoliberal capitalism, which tends to evaluate human worth according to the capacity to perform efficiently within competitive environments.

This paper approaches meritocratic ideology through a crip lens, engaging with the emerging field of Crip Studies, a transdisciplinary framework that extends Crip Theory by integrating multiple epistemological and methodological perspectives. Building on the insights of Disability Studies and Queer Theory, Crip Studies interrogate the normative systems that regulate bodies, identities, and ways of living, making visible how different structures of oppression operate together and reinforce one another (Centrone, 2025).

From this perspective, meritocratic ideology can be understood as structurally ableist. As Robert McRuer argues, modern societies operate through the implicit expectation of compulsory able-bodiedness, a normative standard that assumes bodies should be autonomous, efficient, and constantly capable of performing within capitalist temporalities (McRuer, 2006). Educational institutions play a key role in reproducing these expectations, evaluating students according to standardized criteria of performance, discipline, and developmental normality.

Seen through a crip perspective, ableism does not only affect disabled people, it organizes a broader hierarchy of bodies based on their capacity to conform to socially sanctioned norms: bodies that interrupt expectations of productivity, autonomy, or linear development—such as disabled, chronically ill, or neurodivergent bodies—are often positioned as deviant within meritocratic frameworks. At the same time, bodies that destabilize dominant gender norms and reproductive expectations, including trans and queer subjects, can similarly challenge the normative order that meritocratic ideology seeks to stabilize (Butler, 1990).

These dynamics are also connected to dominant relational norms. Recent work on mononormativity has highlighted how capitalist societies tend to naturalize the monogamous couple as the legitimate form of affective and sexual life, shaping expectations around intimacy, care, and social reproduction (Vasallo, 2022). When examined from a crip perspective, these norms appear closely tied to broader systems of normalization that privilege stable, productive, and socially recognizable forms of life. Within this framework, meritocracy functions not simply as a mechanism of evaluation but as a technology of normalization that contributes to producing hierarchies among bodies and identities. In the Italian education system, such dynamics often coexist with discourses that formally promote inclusion. The result is a configuration that can be described as pseudo-inclusion: institutional practices that appear inclusive while continuing to reproduce normative expectations about bodies, abilities, and identities.

Mobilizing the analytical tools offered by Crip Studies, this paper argues that addressing ableist meritocracy requires more than expanding access to existing educational structures. It requires a critical examination of the normative assumptions that underpin educational institutions and a rethinking of educational practices in ways that foreground interdependence, collective responsibility, and epistemic plurality.