Mind the Gap, Don’t Just Bridge It: Cultivating Critical Mindfulness When Performing the Stories of Others

Abstract

Mindfulness, as it is popularly practiced today, is the cultivation and embodied awareness of the moment you are in. For those whose bodies go unmarked, this may feel liberatory, but for marginalized people a hyperawareness of the body marks everyday life. Such moments facilitate an attunement to the body based on a recognition of and embeddedness within an oppressive sociocultural matrix. I present a series of exercises that cultivate critical mindfulness in our approach to ethnographic research, encouraging mindfulness not just as a means for personal liberation but to develop a critical social consciousness rooted in the perspectives of Others.