In the guest lecture "Overload vs. overlord - mindfulness between coping with everyday life and legitimising power" on 26 November 2024, Laura Schwinger shed light on the growing importance of mindfulness in our everyday lives as part of the Ver:achtsamkeit lecture series. With a view to the "contemptuousness of everyday life" and the paradoxes of the mindfulness market, she explained:

"The mindfulness market has many paradoxes. For example, mindfulness practices often focus strongly on individual behaviour and a distance from world events. At the same time, however, there is also the claim that the world can be "healed" through mindfulness. Apparent contradictions such as these mean that mindfulness appeals to a large number of target groups. These include, in particular, people from middle-class backgrounds who fear social decline or have perhaps already experienced it. It is also of interest to people who primarily want to optimise their work performance. Many identify very strongly with their job and see it as a means of self-realisation as well as a contribution to the progress of humanity. To this end, they also accept working conditions that are associated with deregulation and the blurring of boundaries, i.e. with uncertainty and less separation between work and private life. Of course, mindfulness should and can help combat stress, but I also see in it the potential for its great popularity to mask developments that lead to more social inequality."

Laura Schwinger studied cultural anthropology and musicology in Mainz and has been co-editor of testcard, an anthology on the history and present of pop culture, since 2017. In addition to her work as a DJ and event organiser, she also works academically and journalistically on music and space, feminism and neoliberal control mechanisms. In the latest testcard, she wrote about mindfulness, minimalism and refeudalisation.

Text: Tina Götz