Gensler Symposium: Performing Feminist Joy | Collective Care: Anti-racist Mindfulness and Meditation Practices

This presentation centers around comparative analysis of scholarly discussions on self-care in feminist and queer studies and perspectives shared by meditation practitioners of color. While some scholars of care tend to frame meditation and mindfulness as a neoliberal technique of governance with the only goal of personal happiness and self-improvement, people of color who use contemplative practices in their recently published teachings, instead present a complicated picture of the relationship of self- to collective care. For the latter, these practices are crucial not only to communal survival but also to contemporary racial justice activism. The presentation also reflects on gardening, as a contemplative practice, in a community garden in a predominantly black and latinx neighborhood in Colorado. Gardeners and meditators posit these contemplative practices as a mode of interconnected self and collective care in support of anti-racist activism, which function against neoliberal imperatives that privilege privatization, speed, and individualism.

Presentation by Anahi Russo Garrido, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair/Director of Gender, Women and Sexualities Studies/The Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy, GITA, Denver, CO.