Mindfulness As/Is Care: Biopolitics, Narrative Empathy, and Technoscientific Practices

Expanding on research perspectives on narrative empathy, enactivism, and executive functions, Stingl and Weiss propose a mindful critique of technoscientific practices and biomedicalization. Building on their own work on semantic agency theory (SAT) and disruptive enactments, they show how analyzing technoscientific practices through operationalizations of narrative empathy enables a responsible communication of knowledges between expert and lay decision-makers. They illustrate their research perspective on the example of medical-imaging technologies and the production of illness narratives along myths of transparency, and on the example of attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder and the political imagination of children as citizens. Weiss's disruptive enactments, Kantian critique, Foucault's psychagogy, and Langer's mindfulness are understood as complementary perspectives for pragmatic research that aims at clearing up how decision-making can be improved toward promoting healthier and successful lives cooperatively between actors with differing expertise.