From discourse to awareness: Rhetoric, mindfulness, and a psychology without foundations

Abstract

This paper argues for a shift in the grounding of psychology from discourse to a “groundless ground” rooted in an ethically sensitive, within-person, and moment-to-moment embodied awareness. It offers a critique of discursive and rhetorical psychology commensurate with “affective turn” studies and develops an approach based in the practice of mindfulness meditation. This orientation enables the participant-researcher to come into experiential contact with a domain of pre-subjectivity not often addressed by discursive approaches. It also considers parallels between discursive constructionism and Buddhist mindfulness and shows how mindfulness is relationally and rhetorically organized as a social practice. © 2012, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.