Teodor Mladenov
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The European Network on Independent Living
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Chapter 2 builds on the ideas discussed in Chapter 1 by introducing the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL), a major Independent Living actor in Europe and beyond. ENIL’s work is considered in significant historical, operational, and organisational detail by exploring the network’s democratic constitution, its adherence to the ‘nothing about us without us’ principle, its efforts at mediating between the policy makers and the grassroots, and the related issues of political representation. ENIL’s own definition of ‘Independent Living’ is then analysed in depth to complement the foregoing analysis of Independent Living’s intervention in the hermeneutics of independence. ENIL’s definitional efforts are studied as a prominent example of challenging the conventional, liberal-individualist understanding of independence as self-sufficiency. In its stead, the organisation has promoted an alternative concept, according to which independence means that one has choice and control in one’s everyday life, including choice and control over one’s support. The chapter also highlights ENIL’s intersectional turn, linking it to contemporary trends in disability advocacy and critical disability studies scholarship. On this basis, it is argued that ENIL has advanced epistemic justice with and for disabled people by asserting the meanings elaborated within the Independent Living paradigm and the social model of disability in a context of continuing hermeneutical marginalisation perpetuated by disabling societies, service providers, and caring professionals. In addition to critical-theoretical analyses of disability and independence, the account of ENIL’s work in Chapter 2 contributes to the efforts at creating an archive of disabled people’s intellectual production and activism.

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