Gelassenheit as resistance against normative self-narrowing Religious-educational perspectives on identity formation in the digital age

Abstract

The digital world today imposes normative demands of visibility and performance on young people that increasingly impact processes of selfhood and identity formation. Social media creates and perpetuates a pressure towards optimization, which gives rise to a paradoxical structure of freedom where subjects perceive themselves as projects, causing psychological overload and normative self-narrowing. This article explores the potential of Gelassenheit (serenity/letting-be) as an educational and spiritual counter-concept to address this. In this context, Gelassenheit becomes a form of resistance that does not result in withdrawal but rather constitutes a practice of acknowledgement, presence, and openness. Theological anthropologies (Augustine, Luther, Metz, Sölle) are brought into dialogue with cultural analyses (Butler, Reckwitz) in order to critically expose mechanisms of digital normativity and to transform them through a religious-educational perspective. The aim is to create a resonant space in which subjectivity is no longer bound to instrumental logics but allows for dignity, temporality, and hope to be newly tangible. Religious education thus emerges as a privileged space where young people are not treated as projects to be optimized, but rather are accepted in their plurality and fragility as individual subjects.