Creating a Schema for Kinneavy’s Conception of Kairos: A Scaffolded Endeavor

 

            As a former language arts teacher, Kinneavy’s writing interested me as a way to frame rhetorical aspects of the writing classroom. To be frank, the first time reading through his work left me perplexed with many conflicting ideas all competing as the foundation defining the complex term. It was after working with Tyreek and generating a schema to organize Kinneavy’s conception of kairos did I fully understand these implications for pedagogy in a systematic fashion. Tyreek and I decided to generate a schema that would organize multiple facets kairos yet leave room for discussion. Kinneavy sets the foundation of karios as two main components: right timing and proper measure. We understood right timing as the “good time” to deliver and proper measure as a metaphorical appropriate proportion of what is given. Starting from this point, we used the two dimensions to further think about and understand kairos.

            The first component of kairos, good time, is overarching and seems to bleed into the other dimensions found in the term. This was particularly interesting to Tyreek and I as we generated our schema. As we began our endeavor of organizing the complex word, we believed the two primary components were distinct and separate parts of kairos that had no interlacing and that “good time” essentially stood and worked alone. It was after working through the five dimensions of proper measure did we begin to notice the need for good time in those areas as well. So while our schema has good time and proper measure as distinct entities, they are deeply and interestingly connected with and within one another. The second component of kairos is proper measure. This one, as Kinneavy puts it, is “elusive” in that it contains multiple and complex dimensions that work interdependently to do something right. Tyreek and I decided to continue to organize our schema by separating the five dimensions of proper measure into five distinct categories: ethical dimension, epistemological dimension, rhetorical dimension, aesthetic dimension, and the civic education dimension. While we saw a place for each dimension, we found the epistemological dimension to be especially intriguing, as it seemed to us to encompass all of life. Kinneavy calls this “critical moments” and the “defining of the character”. We appreciated that a writer’s previous experiences were taken into account as an important factor of composition, as this is a ideal that both Tyreek and I hold valuable in our personal pedagogical philosophies.

            In addition to defining kairos, Kinneavy laid out the historical framework of his conceptualization. This was helpful to us in identifying the theorist and therefore assumptions Kinneavy held as valuable. While we did find some fault with this way of viewing the composition classroom, I found it helpful in understanding the multiple facets of the composition classroom as new to the field and was able to take away newly constructed ideas and an organizational tools that could be implemented in the future.

Scaffolding the Trivium through Kairos: Grammar, Rhetoric, Circulation

After class on Tuesday, two things stuck in my mind as evidence of my misunderstanding: one on the ground level, one on a broader conceptual level. The first was my struggle with taking McLuhan out of Brooks and Mara’s “rhetorical container” to understand their argument that the Trivium might be a point of convergence rather than separate parts. Muddying that water even further, Dr. Graban mentioned that over the past two weeks, we have been trying to focus on the field’s shift to dialectic: what I took from that was that Brooks and Mara are using the Trivial “dialectic” as a node on their own “Trilectic” relationship with Grammar and Rhetoric, which confused me. That’s when I realized I haven’t understood the broader sense in which we have been using the term in relation to this “turn.” By working with Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel I have begun to understand the word in a broader sense, which I think has more to do with interrelationships of multiple parts rather than the classical, i.e. Platonic, sense of 

Sheridan et al rely on diagrams of networks to illustrate their conception of kairos, but ultimately, I think they end up showing us rhetoric as a whole. Connecting their conception of kairos to Brooks and Mara’s re-conception of the Trivium, I think we might be able to map each in relation to modern day writing students. If McCluhan was interested in media scholars using the interconnected Trivium, I’m more interested in how the trivium and kairos work to train those media scholars because I think we still scaffold them through our education system, and rightly so; dialectic is an advanced and fairly abstract notion, but re-thinking it through Sheridan’s Kairos we can see how it is a goal of advanced study in rhetoric. With classical Grammar being primarily concerned with collecting knowledge and learning forms and systems, it sounds strikingly similar to primary and secondary education that is oftentimes concerned with regurgitation and belletristic texts for five-paragraph AP exam essays. In FYC, we attempt to un-teach some of those methods by offering a good grounding in rhetorical knowledge so that our students can perform in writing contexts. To that end, I aim to provide my students with an understanding of composition almost exactly like Sheridan et al’s diagram on page 54. But we needen’t throw out students’ previous education; the diagram requires grammatical knowledge in terms of genre. Whereas early education teaches the forms, we teach them to think about forms and how they can serve their purposes as composers. I think the goals of FYC align well with the goals of Trivial rhetoric in that we try to prepare them for the discursive practices of the academy and the public sphere. In getting to think in terms of this first rhetorical network, we then prepare them for 

I’m still a bit hazy on how to treat the classical dialectic because as I said, I always associate it with Plato. And looking at Brooks and Mara again, I’m still getting that sense, to a degree. Classical dialectic is the highest level of the Trivium and associated with finding “Truth” in the world by looking at it in its totality, but Brooks and Mara highlight that modern dialecticians have attempted to ground themselves more in pragmatism of the everyday. We can connect this to Sheridan’s Kairos by looking at their treatment of Circulation as the culmination of rhetoric. There is a growing sense in writing studies that we are doing our students a disservice by teaching writing in a rhetorical vacuum through synthetic assignments with nebulous exigencies and vague audiences. Concepts like Circulation offer us a chance to bring “real life” into the writing classroom by having students not only define their audiences, but also choose the medium and modes of circulation that ensure their compositions will actually find their way to the target audience. This aspect of writing tasks is a fairly advanced concept that requires an awareness of logistics; and while I think many Freshmen could be capable of this task, I don’t think circulation should be in the first year-classroom. And that’s also a matter of logistics: in a fifteen-week-course, you can’t expect to introduce a foundation of rhetoric, genre, modes, and media, and circulation. Teaching with something advanced like circulation requires a foundation of the other concepts, which is why an advanced course like WEPO at FSU is a good forum for circulation. Students must compose rhetorical rationales for each of their projects, and the final project is viral campaigns, the focus of which is 

So, while a “new” trivium might be useful to us as theorists, if we consider it pedagogically, it may still be a useful model for student progression. Naturally, I couldn’t have come to this understanding without grappling with Brooks and Mara through Sheridan and the Prezi that Erik and I made together. I think it was Sheridan et al’s use of networked diagrams that really resonated with me, and it helped that their first diagram models a pedagogy that I try to accomplish in my classroom. I was amazed at how they elaborated on this first diagram with circulation because it provides such an encompassing view of the factors that go into the processes and products of composition. In doing so, they invoked a lot of theorists explicitly and implicitly, which Erik and I tried to show in our sections on ethics, intertext, and philosophical contours. I’m sure that we left many folks out, e.g, “Bakhtin, et al” was shorthand for the many others that have helped build genre theory. Further, I was left a bit puzzled about how they draw the lines between circulation, distribution, and delivery; while they are separate tiers of the hierarchy, I wasn’t completely sure that they should have been. Regardless, visualizing the article helped me see their concerns and connections and understand the larger project we have been engaged in the past two weeks.

At the center of Kairos for Kinneavy: A process memo

Here, I want to unpack the choice to place consciousness at the center of our model--there are, of course, many elements to our model, but this extended discussion of consciousness and kairos may help viewers better undersatnd the model on the whole. 

To begin our schema for Kinneavy’s model of kairos, Mandy and I first imagined the concept as having a series of layers that converge to a point—if we are to imagine kairos as such, what would be at the center.  From this question, we branched out our schema.

We had three possibilities based on three excerpts or implicit allusions in the article.  We first began with the possibility of “a response, a text, or action” as being at the center of kairos.  When focusing on the first principle of kairos, this makes sense: “the right or opportune time to do something” (Kinneavy 80; emphasis mine). As the principle states, the kairos serves the action—hence the doing of something.  But as Mandy and I discussed further, we realized that while kairos can provide something to an action, Kinneavy is conceptualizing kairos more broadly—specifically, the bulk of his discussion is centered on understanding this second principle: “right measure in doing something” (80), but while the doing something is still mentioned in this second principle, Kinneavy spends much of his time understanding and unpacking the idea of right measure and propriety.

Mandy and I also became particularly interested in Kinneavy’s Epistemological dimension of kairos—in particular, the idea that there is a direct connection between kairos and the construction of knowledge. In reference to Tillich’s discussion of kairos, Kinneavy explains,

[Tillich] argues for the importance of the kairos approach because it brings theory into practice, it asserts the continuing necessity of free decision, it insists on the value and the norm aspects of ideas, it champions a vital and concerned interest in knowledge because knowledge always is relevant to the situational context, and it provides a better solution to the problem of uniting idea and historical reality. (90; emphasis mine)

In other words, the idea of information is similar to knowledge in that both terms, to some degree, relate to data, but what I believe makes the difference between these two words is that knowledge is social, contextual, situated, and necessarily learned, but information is amassed and un-interpreted.  Kairos, then, would play a major role in knowledge: it provides a relevance and context that Tillich is alluding to.

But then, as much as this idea is compelling, Kinneavy is talking about knowledge and kairos, but he is also uniting knowledge with the response, text, action. He provides us with an example from a student that seems to bridge these two concepts.  In his freshman composition class, he had students read “the Perils of Nuclear Freeze” by Lt. Colonel Donald Gilleland—Gilleland, here, posits that the US would not be the first to strike Russia with a nuclear attack. But in conference, a student explained to him that she was not aware that the US was the only nation to have ever dropped a nuclear bomb (atomic bomb, specifically). As Kinneavy writes, “This student obviously did not have the historical consciousness to write the topic” (99; emphasis mine). Similar Tillich, Kinneavy sees kairos as bringing theory to practice, but in this scenario, we’re not only talking about big, capital “T” Theory, but consciousness or awareness of factors that contribute to someone’s worldview. This student, for example, would not have been able to measure the occasion to successfully write her text because she did not have the right fluency or networked knowledge or (as Mandy and I explain) consciousness that would provide her with help in writing the “right” response. Or a partially “right” response.

Put another way, consciousness allows us to see kairos as being necessarily networked: in order to know the appropriate response, we have to know if our response fits within our constructed understanding of the situation which has been networked with several materials, concepts, experiences, etc. If we do not have a fuller network or we do not use relevant/appropriate materials to construct the situation (consciousness), we will not be successful. Relatedly, Sheridan shows us that kairos can be a network of nine elements, but is it only just nine? What about history that Kinneavy finds important?  

So, as our schema indicates, consciousness is a network of elements that provides us with the right kinds of knowledge to know what is relevant, what is appropriate, and what are the “critical moments” that are important within historical context to present. 

Kinneavy's Conception of Kairos for Composition Classrooms: It (May) Work

Mackenzie and I examined Kinneavy’s conception of kairos primarily because we felt that he offered a very useful and well-nuanced take on the modern composition classroom and closely matched some of our own philosophies on the college composition classroom and our pedagogical efforts. Once Kinneavy explained his conception of kairos by situating the term and its composition by way of exploring both the explicit and implicit mentioning of the term in classical rhetoric, theory, and schools, we felt that he established meaningful grounds for exploring its application into the modern composition classroom. By defining kairos as (a.) neutral and a “good time” and (b.) appropriate measure, there was great room left for exploration and how the term could be applied to modern composition theory (85). Because Mackenzie and I have some background in teaching writing and the composing process, Kinneavy’s work seemed to be something that, at the very least, would serve as one other theory that could possibly be built off of if proven not to work in the classroom.  

            As we explored Kinneavy’s conception of kairos before exploring how he believed kairos could be applied to the composition classroom, we noticed a large variety of intricacies that could complicate the application of the concept to the classroom and instruction. Kinneavy mentions subtly when he admits that the second element of kairos is “more elusive” (85). We realized that the dimensions of kairos that Kinneavy would ultimately explore would be the very reason why he felt that this term should be the basis of the modern composition classroom. Without these intricacies and interwoven concepts and dimension, the term could not be extended much further than the first definition of kairos, as a neutral or “good” time, that Kinneavy offers us, and could never serve as a basis for the building of a complete composition program at any level.

            Perhaps this is good time to explore these intricacies as Kinneavy explains them. These “dimensions,” seemed quite far-fetched and overreaching before Mackenzie and I looked to create a schema for his argument for kairos’s inclusion in the modern composition classroom. However, after accepting several assumptions that Kinneavy has based his theory off of, there does seem to be a very nice case for concept to serve as this basis for which he advocates. The ramifications of such an inclusion could only be explained by the historical insight Kinneavy affords his readers. The close relation to justice, justice being determined by circumstance, to kairos, was quite the compelling case (87). Although Kinneavy requires that we accept his proposition of an extension of the definition of kairos to include this relation, his grounding of the two concepts and their relation certainly serves his purposes well. By including the grounding of several theories by prominent philosophers, Kinneavy makes what we believed to be a very sufficient point. Kinneavy includes Plato’s doctrine of virtue as a philosophy grounded right time and proper measure, the two components of kairos, and how this doctrine serves as the basis for Aristotle’s extension of virtue and “emerges as the classic Greek doctrine of virtue” (88). By noting and explaining just how woven concepts of kairos are included in many of the most prominent theories are, Kinneavy is able to create a line all the way to composition theory of the 21^st century.

            In Kinneavy’s case-making agenda, he explored the epistemological dimension of kairos. This, in competition with kairos’s ethical dimension and its consequences, is probably Kinneavy’s most compelling case. In modern composition classrooms, we as instructors seek to create student-writers that are well-rounded, critical, observant, self-aware, culturally aware, and see writing as a commitment to the exploration of self and all things that surround the self. As Kinneavy explains, kairos works very well to create this kind of student-writer we are so looking to create and mold in our composition classrooms. Kinneavy explains kairos as a trend of thinking that is in direct opposition to the adopted Western approach that our schools have seemingly taken. By Kinneavy’s assumption, or perhaps Tillich’s assumption, our composition classrooms have taken the approach that favors logos, or a form of thinking that is “characterized by an emphasis on timelessness, on form, on law, on stasis, on method…” (89). However, a kairos approach adequately opposes this type of writing and composing. He explains Tillich’s favor for kairos by offering its (possible) achievements. These include that

“it brings theory into practice, it asserts that continuing necessity of free decision, it insists on the value and norm aspects of ideas, it champions a vital and concerned interest in knowledge because knowledge always in relevant to the situational context, and it provides a better solution to the problem of uniting idea and historical reality than the solution of either Hegel or Marx” (90).

The consequences of adopting such a dimension of kairos into the construction of a composition classroom, we may be able to mold the student-writers that we so desire. Student-writers that are far more conscious, aware, and critical of themselves as writers and the subject matter and communities they are situated within. By accepting this approach, modern composition instructors may be able to attain what they originally claimed was their emphasis and goal for any student-writer.

Perhaps, this does not serve as an adequate representation of Kinneavy’s argument in totality, but it does offer some insight as to why Mackenzie and I chose the author we did, why we found ourselves accepting both his idea of kairos and how it could serve us in the construction of a more viable for our goals composition program. This does not mean that Kinneavy’s approach is completely bullet-proof, for many of the assumption he makes are far-reaching for the sake of his efforts, but we can accept his theory as something that could possibly be built off of for our efforts. 

The Unavoidably Social Nature of Kairos

    Travis and I created our schema of Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel's Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric with a special focus on the intertexts, hierarchy of concerns, and philosophical contours stated and implied. Prominent rhetorical theoreticians such as Lloyd Bitzer, Kenneth Burke, and Gunther Kress were invoked explicitly within the text. Some of their own schemas or models were invoked in the grand kairotic schema because of elements they share with those in Figure 3 and Figure 5 of Sheridan, et al. Bitzer's model of the rhetorical situation, for instance, emphasizes both exigency and audience as antecedents to the kairotic struggle (i.e., ongoing response to "the fitting situation") of the author (or rhetor) in producing a composition. Of course, intertextual relationships must begin with the development of kairos as a concept by classical philosophers and rhetors, which Sheridan, et al acknowledge in their six-point model of kairos. Sheridan, et al did, however, clearly intend their development of kairos as a pivoting or turning away from the traditional notion of kairos. Our schema explicitly incorporates the major kairotic expansions proposed by Sheridan, et al, which extend the "struggle" denoted by the term to include moments well before and after composition. Sheridan, et al argued that the value of their expansion was to draw attention to materiality as "an aspect of rhetorical practice that had often been overlooked" (54). Materiality, as they demonstrate, is a concept that is articulated by the mode of rhetorical content and the media used to produce that content, but it also includes infrastructural resources which hardly resemble the traditional media involved in composition.
    Travis and I used Prezi to create our schema. I think that Prezi was an appropriate tool for this task for several reasons. Primarily, it allowed Travis and I to collaborate simultaneously within the same digital space. Added benefits include the freeness of the tool, Travis' expertise using the tool, which he kindly shared with me, and the ability of the tool to incorporate multimedia objects into the schema. I will linger on the last element longer because it was especially harmonious with the arguments of Sheridan, et al. The ability to incorporate multimodal (i.e., text, images) media elements into our schema provided us with an opportunity to apply the kairotic struggle within our kairotic schema. This meta- aspect of the assignment was particularly salient for me on the axis or path between audience and rhetor. The primary audience for our schema was our classmates, but as Travis and I collaborated to build it, we each acted as an audience of one for the other in real-time, in that we actively interpreted the work of one another as we built the schema from our original design. Like compositions created within a textual mode, or multimodal video compositions, our collaborative composition went through multiple iterations.
    Sheridan, et al used the term collaborator to capture the diverse roles of those who contribute to the primary rhetor of a particular composition. Collaborators need not be an active co-creator in a particular composition, but when that is the case, as it was in this assignment, the collaborators find themselves playing both the role of rhetor and audience. In essence this doubles the circles representing audience and rhetor in the kairotic models of Sheridan, et al. Social and dialectical processes are at play in the positioning between collaborators as they work together on a composition. This process also appears in their discussion of multimodal rhetoric in the public sphere, a concept introduced by Habermas. Public spheres are physical-rhetorical spaces where multiple individuals engage in those dialectical processes. Rhetorical theorists including Sheridan, et al complicated the public sphere concept by drawing attention to its status as "an ecological web of factors" (71). I think that our collection of schemas of kairos as a class may serve to instantiate the complexity of this ecological view of the public sphere. Our schemas will be contingent given the social dynamics of the teams that produced them, including their own schemas of rhetoric and composition (which are changing as we spend more time with the texts in this course).

The "Kairotic" Struggle Is Real

Creating a schema by re-envisioning the arguments presented in Chapter three of “The Available Means of Persuasion,” by David M. Sheridan, Jim Ridolfo, and Anthony J. Michel, allowed Netty and I to demonstrate the struggle of decision making in the writing process by utilizing the application, MindNode Lite. Sherdian et al. dive into the root of the discussion by defining “kairos” as “the way rhetors negotiate or ‘struggle’ with and against the contexts as they seek a particular outcome” (50). Initially, we referred to Figure 3 on page 54, which presents the main concerns of the “kairotic struggle” (60) in a hexagonal formation. After dissecting and rearranging the components of the figure, Netty and I were able to present the discussion in a cascading format, allowing the branches to demonstrate the process of decision-making in a “before” (invention) and “after” (circulation) sequence.


Because Chapter three of “The Available Means of Persuasion” focuses on the “kairotic struggle” and the process of composing a product, the schema is centered on the “kairotic struggle,” while further exploring the process of invention and circulation. In terms of invention, the rhetor must take into account the mode, media, genre, audience, and exigency that encompass the process prior to composing. Mode (the form of the product) and media (how the product is created) have multiple influences, including socially, symbolically, and materialistically. The audience, linguistic devices, and availability of materials are vital concerns when partaking in the invention process.


Circulation, which is distinguished as the route that a product takes after completion (through various avenues of media), was expanded by way of material/cultural fields, modes, genres, and media. Material importance is also addressed in circulation, as well as invention, due to the availability and diversity of material options. How a rhetor chooses to disburse a completed work, such as the consideration of categorizing under a specific genre or the options of material and cultural fields, challenges the rhetor to make clear decisions that can vastly influence the final product.


The schema we created complicated Sherdian et al’s initial visual representation, while expanding on the process of invention and circulation. Multimodal rhetoric is explored by discussing the usage of media, and distribution of content is presented. Additionally, the idea that distribution strictly occurs in the circulation process is challenged, which demonstrates that the process of invention is just as prevalent as circulation.




Works Cited

Sheridan, David M., Ridolfo, Jim, and Michel, Anthony J. “Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric.” The Available Means of Persuasion. Anderson: Parlor Press, 2012. 50-74. PDF.

A Look Inside Kairos's Cranium

Kairos pictured as a mythical god.

During the process of brainstorming about our schema, Joe and I both felt some resistance toward the Sheridan et al. piece. In my case, while I valued some of the terminology and components of their theory, I disliked being given two different models representing the ideas within the text, as it limited the way I could think about "kairotic struggle" to only the relationships they articulated. Instead, we opted to create a schema for Kinneavy's version of kairos, partially because we were really interested in the idea of Kairos as a mythical being, but mostly because we were interested in exploring the subtle ways he explores the two possible meanings of kairos: 1) the appropriate or opportune time and/or circumstances and 2) the appropriate measure (80). Because he asserts that kairos has been neglected in composition studies, Kinneavy attempts to demonstrate the importance of classical rhetoric in modern composition, to present an extended definition of kairos, and to advocate its use in the composition classroom.

The first meaning of kairos, "the right or opportune time to do something," seems pretty straight-forward at first. Kinneavy articulates that kairos concerns the "appropriateness of the discourse to the particular circumstances of the time, place, speaker, and audience involved" (84). This definition appears to be much like Bitzer's "rhetorical situation," in terms of which elements comprise the context of a specific exigence (though Kinneavy doesn't discuss kairos in terms of exigencies). Kinneavy refers to these elements as situational context, rather than an ecology, which strikes us as a significant distinction. We complicated these terms by thinking of context or situation as having the particular text at the forefront with the surrounding materials as background. We imagined an ecology as having no one particular text emphasized over another; all elements would be treated as equally significant. Kinneavy's choice of words implies to us that he conceptualizes kairos as the surrounding materials that supply context to one particular text, rather than taking all the elements as a holistic ecology. This situational context is deemed necessary for kairos because it leads to historical, cultural, or social consciousness, without which, the composition will be ineffective or ill-rendered.

Our "brainstorm" for the schema. 

We viewed consciousness as the central theme or Kinneavy's exploration of kairos. As we developed our schema, we found that other terminology contributed to the development of consciousness or were products that could only be achieved with or through consciousness. Without consciousness, one would be unable to effectively persuade an audience, but even more significantly, one would not have sufficient knowledge to invent. This was where our diagram started getting sticky. As soon as we plotted "consciousness" on the whiteboard, a series of arrows connecting the term to several others sprung up. The term seemed so inter-related to the others, it became central to our schema. Circumstances/occasion, situational context, and the social all contribute to consciousness. Consciousness is required for knowledge, which is needed for invention, which allows for one to determine and participate in a "critical moment" (89) of the text.

Our final schema of kairos, of course, with a forelock!

The second meaning of kairos, "the right measure in doing something," is particularly interesting. Kinneavy explains that kairos encompasses an ethical component, and is closely related to justice: "Justice, therefore, was determined by circumstances: justice was kairos" (87).  Joe and I considered the inclusion of ethics to represent a sort of collective consciousness that was related to the social. Without the presence of a collective, there could be no ethical considerations. We also considered that kairos as justice may have to do with reciprocation. If it is the right measure of justice, it alludes to the same idea as "a punishment fitting the crime." Kinneavy does not discuss justice in terms of reciprocation, however, but leaves the ethical dimension of kairos as amorphously defined.

In creating this schema, we realize that we might have read more into Kinneavy's definition than, perhaps, he intended. However, we found it both challenging and useful to map out the connections that relate the components of kairos. We began to see kairos as a network of inter-relating, mutually defining parts, rather than a discrete element of classical rhetoric. After charting the complex folds of Kairos's cranium, we feel that there may be a place for kairos in modern composition classrooms. We need only "take the opportunity by the forelock" (93).

Sheridan et al.: Marxists?

This exploratory schema project highlighted for me how precisely Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michael’s model of kairos is “fundamentally different” (53) from the traditional models they cite, as well as the implications for composition studies in general their model raises.

As Julianna and I began sketching out the main ideas from Sheridan et al.’s article, we originally put circulation at the heart of our diagrams, understanding it as one of the central ideas Sheridan et al grapple with, and it does in fact feature in half of the numbered conclusions they come to at the end of their article (73). Circulation, however, felt slightly off; even though circulation ties into a few of the points of articulation Sheridan et al. identify, it was still a little too specific to be the main focus of the kairotic struggle. As we searched for the idea behind circulation, we came across this line:

[K]airos is not only a function of social concerns...or symbolic concerns...but is also a function of material considerations...In other words, traditional models of rhetorical invention are fundamentally flawed because they fail to account for both the diversity and the materiality of available rhetorical practices. (55, emphasis added)

Social and symbolic concerns, then, which might also be interpreted as cultural and rhetorical (or social and rhetorical, as in our schema), underlie conventional understandings of what composers take into account and what makes up their context, however Sheridan et al. are calling attention to the material world, both physical and digital, as intrinsically affecting the composition process and kairotic moment. Mental processes of composition, then, cannot be completely separated from the material contexts in which they take place, anymore than they can from the social and rhetorical contexts.

This focus on materiality immediately calls to mind Marx and the impact of economic conditions. Sheridan et al. emphasize the ways access to material resources affect composition, such as how Ridolfo’s access to the “infrastructural resources” (73) of professional quality cameras, microphones, computers, and video editing software helped him achieve legitimacy in his documentary film. Related are the concerns Cynthia Selfe raises in “Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention” (JSTOR link), with her concerns that students without access to computers--disproportionately students of color and from low socioeconomic backgrounds--will find themselves disadvantaged in composition classrooms and in the workplace.

Marx himself asserts in “Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions” that ideas are directly linked to the materiality of people, and even consciousness itself is dependent on, as his title suggests, material realities. Sheridan et al. do not go quite so far; their understanding of kairos seems to operate less on composition as meaning-making, yet certainly both theories share an understanding of material concerns as key forces in shaping the bounds of possibility, whether in ideologies and understandings of reality or in composition and concerns of circulation.

Works Cited:
-Marx, Karl. “Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions.” The Critical Tradition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007. 406-409. Print. 
-Selfe, Cynthia. "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention." College Composition and Communication 50.3 (1999) 411-436. PDF.
-Sheridan, David M., Ridolfo, Jim, and Michel, Anthony J. “Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric.” The Available Means of Persuasion. Anderson: Parlor Press, 2012. 50-74. PDF.

The Kairotic Struggle

                At the center of our schema is the “kairotic struggle” – an articulation of kairos that is unique to these three authors. Based on the reading, we understand and convey the kairotic struggle as a force or pull that draws on three primary pressures (social, material, and symbolic) to create the context which rhetors must negotiate in order to effect their intended result. In the cloud-like structure, we’ve coded in large black text the more conventional pressures of the kairotic struggle that we have perceived within the scholarship thus far (the social and the symbolic). Juxtaposing these factors in red text is the chief “pressure” of the kairotic struggle: the material. By placing these functions side by side, we mean to emphasize their interdependence without suggesting that they are in any way conflated. In many cases, multiple or all pressures will simultaneously come together to create the context from which a rhetor’s message emanate. We’ve coded in smaller black wording the elements traditionally thought to comprise the rhetorical situation (rhetor, audience, and exigency). In smaller red font, likewise, we’ve coded the “complications” or “nuances” that Sheridan et al bring forth as additional components of the rhetorical situation (genres, other compositions, collaborators, modes, media of reproduction and distribution, media of delivery). The lines connecting the cloud structure to the lower structure are meant to represent how the kairotic struggle actively exerts pressures (social, symbolic, and most importantly to these theorists, material) on our traditional understanding of composition. The lower structure, at first glance, represents the traditional continuum –the “before-after framework” – that Sheridan et al argue must be eliminated from our understanding of how kairos functions within public rhetoric (51). The three subcategories gridded within the structure denote, respectively, the beginning stage of composition, the nebulous “process” stage of composition, and finally the post-composition activity of circulation and distribution. We acknowledge this “rigid, linear structure” (51) only to problematize it, however. The squiggly lines connecting the beginning of the structure to the ending are meant to acknowledge the theorists’ charge that, within any given context, we must “include questions that arise before the rhetor commits to writing as a mode, as well as questions that arise after a rhetor is finished with the composition” (51). In this way, our understanding of the kairotic struggle poses the process as ongoing and active in the dialectical sense, highlighting the notion that “the real struggle only begins once the work is complete” (60). The lines, then, describe the rhetorical situation as unstable, uncertain, and contingent. Viewed together, both structures are meant to represent the “radical simultaneity” of all the listed factors (70). That is, although we separate all the components both of the rhetorical situation and the kairotic struggle for the sake of analysis, we also acknowledge that they “form a web of interdependent relationships that exist all-at-once” (70).  

While the Kinneavy article provided a solid grounding for us in terms of the historical conceptions and uses of kairos as a term, Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel brought the theory into practice by focusing on kairos, not as a term, but as an active force or “struggle” acting upon the rhetorical situation. This is not to say that Kinneavy doesn’t attempt to offer an application of the term. His proffered application, however, is clearly not in accord with current pedagogical practices within a social epistemic framework. He writes, “If we are to take a cue from the Greeks to foster a sense of kairos, then we might do well to train to kairos by a study of literature” (104). In light of the ideas offered by Sheridan et al, Kinneavy’s suggested application seems fairly stagnant and page-bound, as it lacks the emphasis on materiality and circulation that we find in “Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric.” By extending the term beyond its traditional definition as “the right or opportune time to so something, or right measure in doing something,” (80), these authors nuanced Kinneavy’s interpretation of Kairos as a force situated principally within the cultural and symbolic functions of rhetoric. They write, for instance, “As we conceive of it, then, kairos is not only a function of social concerns (such as the beliefs and attitudes of the audience) or symbolic concerns (such as the linguistic devices that can best articulate with certain beliefs and attitudes), but is also a function of material considerations, such as the availability of high-definition camcorder and computers with enough processing power to digitize video” (55). In fact, Kinneavy asserts that because of the influence of Aristotelian rhetoric throughout history, kairos has been absent from our rhetorical terminology. It is interesting, then, that Sheridan et al invoke the Aristotelian triangle in figure 3 (54) in order to expand on this structure with the inclusion of materiality as a rhetorical practice that is often not considered within discussions of the term. Although the authors contend that “traditional composition-and-rhetoric frameworks are of limited use in explaining the kairotic struggles of Winter and Wong” (57) excerpted within the article, we saw this less as a negation of the Aristotelian triangle and more as an updated expansion to reflect the growing nature of rhetoric as a practice and discipline.

            An aspect of the theorists’ rendering of Kairos as “struggle” that we had our own struggle capturing within the schema was the nature of its ongoing and simultaneous process. In some sense, we can see two process (compositional and rhetorical) operating alongside one another at the same time. The authors write, “The rhetorical process exceeds the composing process; the rhetor’s work is not done when the composition is done” (60). This dialectical interchange between the beginning and ending of each process reminded us of the theories of invention we touched upon in our previous class discussions. In defining dialectic within the scope of this argument, I want to draw on Gage’s “Adequate Epistemology”: “Dialectic implies that knowledge can be created in the activity of discourse, because it is potentially changed by that activity, either as discourse gets closer to it or as it emerges in the interaction of conflicting ideas” (156). Gage’s definition of dialectic helps us unpack what Sheridan et al envision as a de-stabilizing of the traditional compositional process, which begins with a writer’s choice of mode, media, and genre, and ends in the collective acts of circulation, reproduction, and distribution. The simultaneity of these functions suggests what could also be regarded as a dialectic interaction between both the compositional process and the rhetorical process, manifesting finally in the kairotic struggle as the proposed moment of inertia. In the end, we found that the theorists’ ideas extended and applied Kinneavy’s theoretical underpinning in a practical and useful manner that could easily be implemented within the classroom. 

Kairotic Struggle--Now With More Circulation!

When Charise and I started making our schema of the chapter titled, "Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric" by David Sheridan, Jim Rodolfo and Anthony Michel (which we created using a free Apple computer App called MindNode Lite), it was hard not to reproduce the schema that Sheridan et al. had created. Seeing the information visualized one way, it took us a while to "re-envision" it on our own.

In the chapter we read, Sheridan et al. argue that the definition of kairos and of “kairoitc struggle” (which the authors define as “the way rhetors negotiate or ‘struggle’ with and against the contexts as they seek a particular outcome” (50)) needs to be revisited and redefined to include social, cultural, and material considerations made by the rhetor before and after composing. According to Sheridan et al. “kairotic struggle begins before the rhetor’s commitment to a particular mode” and “extends beyond the moment when the composition is done” (73). The geometric re-envisioning of the rhetorical triangle that Sheridan et al. created portrays a rhetorical decision making process that “begins” with invention and continues all the way through the re-production and appropriation of the text by other authors.

Here is an example of an older mode of circulation. 

The term “circulation,” or the way texts move through time and space, is a key term for Sheridan et al. in arguing for an expanded perception of kairos and of composing. The rhetor has to consider how the text he/she will create will move through time and space, and how it might continue to circulate after initial reception, key factors that come into play are mode, media, genre, materialilty, and the navigation of social/cultural fields. The notion of circulation is particularly helpful in thinking about new media texts like memes, blogs, and social media in general. As rhetors, we choose a medium because of how the text will travel, how accurately it will reach our audience at that moment in time and space via the material mode we have chosen. I particularly liked the example Sheridan et al. give of the housing organization’s choice to not use social media, but who instead relied on old fashioned paper newsletters because the materiality of the newsletter increased the likelihood that it would be read and because the placement of the newsletter in the doors of individuals living in the community created a feeling of community. “Older” modes are still valid and advantageous in the right rhetorical situation.

And a newer example of circulation 

This notion of circulation is implicit in the rhetorical model built by Sheridan et al., while the schema created by Charise and I gives circulation a more prominent role since it is so essential to the argument made by Sheridan et al in the chapter we read. We tried to envision the various considerations made the rhetor in the kairotic struggle, starting first with considerations made before the actual act of composing begins, which we labeled as part of the invention process. A rhetor thinks about the mode he/she will compose in (visually, textually etc), the media he/she will choose to compose with (computer vs. a paint brush), the genre (the internet meme vs. the twitter post), the audience that is to be reached and the conditions existing/facilitating those choices or what I take to be “exigency”.

Sheridan et al. make a concerted effort to validate the existence of kairotic struggle after the text is being composed, which Charise and I tried to give more prominence to in the design of our schema. While many critics would argue, “THAT’S NOT WRITING!” when thinking of post-production kairotic struggles, Sheridan et al. argue that concerns about post-production distribution influence rhetors before composing and thereby influence the writing process. An example of navigating cultural fields is given when Sheridan et al. discuss Shawn Wong, an Asian American author struggling for legitimacy in the racially biased publishing world of 1970’s America. Wong has to navigate a complex cultural field (making friends with publishers first who understand his cultural values and then connecting to the larger publishing world) to distribute his text. In his struggle, he needed to have his text published as a nationally distributed book (as opposed to a chapbook) to gain credibility and to reach a large audience. The networking required to achieve Wong’s goal began before the composing of the book. Another example of choices made during the composing process influenced by choices about distribution occurs when Sheridan et al. discuss the political bumper sticker, written in a brief and concise manner to accommodate the materiality of the small space on a bumper stick that needs to be printed in large letters to be read from a distance. I see the idea of “before” and “after” as a grey area for Sheridan et al. where considerations of distribution occur in the invention process.

In addition, Sheridan et al. mention that the text may be “re-composed” by other parties and that may be intended by the original rhetor, which the authors refer to as “rhetorical recomposition.” An example of this would be the proliferation of material on the Internet re-purposed for memes or remixes, wherein authorship is complicated as the material circulates through time and space being altered along the way. I wonder too how we could bring into a discussion of “material authors” also, or the individuals who architect the tools we use to make memes, create word documents, and or distribute ideas.

My meta-meme: