The presents of the present: mindfulness, time and structures of feeling

ABSTRACT

Mindfulness, as the cultivation of ways to become attentive to the present moment, has grown exponentially in some areas of the global north over the past decade or so. As such, it has generated much important debate about its efficacy and the politics it produces, especially in terms of whether and how mindfulness is a response to, or effect of, neoliberalism. Drawing on Berlant's argument that affects are structured and collective but not necessarily determinative of how people feel and act in relation to them, I explore the affective relations between mindfulness and contemporary (neo)liberal culture as a series of relays, modulations, or recalibrations. More specifically, I approach these affective relations through focusing on temporality. I argue that the practice of mindfulness as a deliberate and conscious focus on the present is central to how its value is imagined by those who promote it and experienced by those who practice it. Drawing on interviews with mindfulness practitioners, analysis of mindfulness books, online forums and communities, I centre the significance of the present to an understanding of the recent proliferation of mindfulness. I draw out the affectivity of mindfulness presents and think these ‘mindfulness presents’ alongside Berlant's identification of the significance of the present to contemporary liberal-capitalism. Situating my argument within broader work that sees time, temporality and affect as central means through which contemporary capitalism is organized and hence should be conceived, I examine how mindfulness is perhaps one way in which contemporary liberal-capitalism is felt and lived with.

KEYWORDS:

• Mindfulness
• time
• temporality
• affect
• structures of feeling
• neoliberalism
• atmospheres

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The interviews are part of a larger project called ‘Mediating Presents: Producing the Now in Contemporary Digital Culture, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. To date, I have interviewed forty-four people, including eight mindfulness practitioners.

2 See also Thrift (2000).

3 Adkins notes that ‘financial institutions and their intermediaries have found a particularly reliable source of such steadiness and punctuality in the female subject’ (2018, 87), thus drawing attention to the gendered aspects of debt and subjectivity (see also Coleman 2016).

4 https://www.everyday-mindfulness.org/what-is-mindfulness-2/ Last accessed on 8th August 2019.

5 https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mindfulness/, Last on 8th August 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Leverhulme Trust: [Grant Number RF-2017-632\8].

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Coleman

Rebecca Coleman is Reader in the Sociology Department, Goldsmiths, University of London, where she teaches and researches across sociology, media and cultural studies and feminist theory. She has published widely on temporality, bodies, affect, media and inventive methodologies: recent publications include Glitterworlds: The Future Politics of a Ubiquitous Thing (2020, Goldsmiths Press), a special issue of MAI on Feminist New Materialist Practice: The Mattering of Method (2019, edited with Tara Page and Helen Palmer) and a special issue of Sociological Review on Futures in Question: Theories, Methods, Practices (2017, edited with Richard Tutton). She is currently working on a project on structures of feeling and the mediation of the present.