Fitness
KH:
With the understanding that kairos as a term has many forms, you said, "Perhaps the most that might be offered are exploratory illustrations of various forms of kairos." It seems as if the intent of this online journal, Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy, is to provide a venue where those exploratory illustrations of the forms of kairos might take shape. In your view, what features of this journal or certain articles published in this journal fit with kairos as a concept?

PS:
Without quoting articles in depth, I do find that the issues of Kairos that I have looked at do have connections to the ancient concept in a number of ways. First, many of the essays are "timely" in that they address significant issues for teachers and others interested in rhetoric, technology, and various forms of pedagogy. For example, the topic of portfolios has been important for at least a generation (and longer in some fields), but electronic portfolios (and accompanying complexities) offer an opportunity to explore the concept of portfolio from a contemporary perspective (and "contemporary" not only in the sense of temporal time, but also in the meaning of strategic time). To cite one article, "Developing a University-Wide Electronic Portfolio System for Teacher Education" is but one example of how a (relatively) "timeless" issue of the portfolio is "brought down" into the commercial stream of contemporary dialogue. Paul Tillich, by the way, developed a system of ethical codification by merging kairos and logos. Logos represents timeless or "eternal" values or truths, but that status is without meaning or significance until those values confront the kairic exigencies of a particular context. Morality, according to Tillich, is an eternal value/verity only when (and only until) it achieves meaning when concretized in the cauldron of time, kairic time. Hence the concept of portfolios achieves special meaning because of its kairic relationship to its status as an issue of familiarity.

PS:
Second, kairos often suggests proportionality, symmetry, relationship. I was intrigued by a recent Kairos article, "E-Pedagogy: Deleuze and Guattari in the Web-Design Class," as an example of a kairic treatment of spatial relationships (Striated Rhetorical Spaces and Smooth Rhetorical Spaces). Although kairos as a term does not appear in the article, its resonance is felt in the analysis. The differentiation between striated and smooth space is, in my view, a kairic relationship not unlike the differentiation Tillich makes in positioning the relationship between eternal values and earthy representations (or "activations" for a lack of a better term). Striated space (with implications of hierarchical structures) functions as antecedent and catalyst, and creates the condition for fulfillment or fruition in smooth space. The rigidity and organization of striated space is necessary - a pre-condition - for the dynamism and freedom of actualization in smooth space, if I am reading Deleuze and Guatarri with any degree of insight. This relationship is a fascinating topic and I would like to say more, but restraints of time do not permit this.

PS:
I have given but two brief illustrations of tactical connections to kairos that I find in the journal. On a broader, conceptual level, it is clear that the journal strives to meet the exigencies of the moment(s). This motive, too, is particularly kairic in scope. One might say that every journal attempts to do the same thing, but I do not think that is the case. Many journals promote a comfortable and comforting tradition of thinking and sometimes demote aggressive, exploratory approaches of interrogation. I believe that the latter case is especially kairic and implies that issues and concepts have meaning only when they confront (and are confronted by) the complications and problematics of the issue. Whether the issue is Deleuze and Guatttari or any other seminal contemporary figures, a rigorous appropriation of them in new ways underscores the principle that their thought has no significance beyond its contextualization in analysis, always and already a timely and time-bound engagement.

Top