Sep 22nd 09
Posted by justin in CCR601
Genealogy Project
3rd Generation – 2nd Generation Author: Hawhee
Miller, Carolyn. “Opportunity, Opportunism, and Progress: Kairos in the Rhetoric of Technology.” Argumentation 8.1 (1994): 81-96. Print.
Executive Summary:
Miller claims that kairos serves “as both a powerful theme within technological discourse and as an analytical concept that explains some of the suasory force by which such discourse maintains itself and its position in our culture” (81). In pursuing this claim, she does a couple of things:
a. She discusses the difference between rhetoric as constructive vs. rhetoric as responsive. Miller views the kairotic moment as central to an understanding of rhetoric as constructive in that kairos explains the “dynamic relationship between discourse and situation, to the qualitative nature of the situation itself as it is shaped in and by discourse” (83).
b. Kairos as central to technology because it emphasizes change, development, progress – all notions central to the ways we conceptualize technology. (83)
c. As an analytic concept, kairos is useful because:
- a. It combines both realist and constructivist understandings of situation and emphasizes the interplay between the two.
- b. It can conceive of change as both continuous and discontinuous. Kairos’ ability to exploit the discontinuous places an emphasis on the epiphanic moment of miracle – the breakthrough. Kairos’ ability to exploit the continuous places an emphasis on the constructive nature of kairos to “make an opportunity at any time, from situational resources that can be constructed a variety of ways (83).
- c. Kairos has a temporal-spatial dimension in that it includes the potentialities of time and place.
d. She discusses the spatial (technology as “state of the art” “bottleneck” “barrier” “push/pull”)
- a. In extending this push/pull metaphor, Miller extends her analysis to argue that the push (scientific development) and the pull (market demand) are both kairotic in that they are justifiable in the kairotic moment.
e. She discusses the temporal (technological era, tech revolution, tech age)
- a. Miller’s discussion of the temporal relies on a discussion of the “S” curve.
f. In the discourse of technological change, there are some interesting conversations:
- a. Change is deterministic in that the “preceding technical situation alone is determinative” of future innovation (88) – and hence, out of control.
- b. Yet, change is not deterministic because of the existence of human interventions and acts of human genius.
g. To encapsulate this argument about technological progress, Miller notes that “the ideology of progress and the ideology of technology out-of-control are thus complementary kairotic constructions: they both read from a series of changing moments a trajectory into the future and a message about appropriate action at the present” (89)
h. After laying out the discourses of technological progress, Miller gets into a discussion of technological forecasting. In brief, technological forecasting is a self-justifying process whereby technologists, by speculating about the future, can shape the future of technology (and can also manage the forces that spin technology toward the brink of human annihilation). In this discussion, a couple of points arise:
- a. Technological forecasting “takes advantage of (or makes advantage of) the realist-constructivist ambivalence in kairos: the forecaster can threaten objectively inevitable future and simultaneously offer a way to reconstruct it.
- b. In this sense, technological forecasters are like sophists – they struggle with epistemological and political uncertainty and the need for reasoned action in the face of uncertainty (91).
- i. In reflecting on the piece, Miller contends “As a construction, the kairotic dimension of discourse offers both assurance about the unknown by extrapolation from the here and now and also control f the uncertain by opportunistic shaping of both present and future.
Cross-Talk:
1. Miller notes, “As an opening, kairos becomes a rhetorical void, a gap, a ‘problem-space’ that a rhetor can occupy for advantage” (84). This seems to talk to Hawhee’s notion of the “inbetweenness” and potential of the kairotic moment.
2. The kairotic location of maximum acceleration, when discussing the “S” curve of technological growth might have an analog in Shirkey’s “long tail.”
Methods/Methodology:
1. Close textual analysis
2. Metaphoric analysis
Major Influences:
1. Martino, Joseph P.: 1972b, ‘Forecasting the Progress of Technology,’ in Martino (ed.), 13-23.
2. Miller, Carolyn R.: 1992, ‘Kairos in the Rhetoric of Science,’ in Steven P. Witte, Neil Nakadate, and Roger Cherry (eds.) A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays Honoring James L. Kinneavy, SIU Press, 310-327.***
3. Poulakos, John: 1983, ‘Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric 16, 35-48.***
4. Vatz, Richard E.: 1973, ‘The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric 6, 154-161.
Key Questions/Concerns:
1. How is the Sophistic reading of kairos an appropriate concept for realizing technological discourses of change?
2. How do discourses of continuity and discontinuity play out in technological discourse? How are these discourses related to kairos?
Sep 21st 09
Posted by justin in CCR601
Genealogy Project
2nd Generation
1. Hawhee, Debra. “Kairotic Encounters.” Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention. Ed. Janet M. Atwill and Janice M. Lauer. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001. 16-35.
Executive Summary:
Hawhee begins her article by discussing how invention is conceived in either exterior or interior terms. That is, invention happens when the rhetor either: a)finds things that exist in a preexistent rhetorical order or b) relies of generative subjectivity to find things from within. Hawhee notes these perspectives to demonstrate the autonomous author problem – i.e., how does subjectivity work when conceiving rhetorical invention? Are there any alternatives to the current conception of subjectivity that might be more useful in a reconfiguration of rhetoric itself?
“Invention-in-the-Middle”
This is a concept derived from the word “heurisko” in Greek – or heuristic in English. It’s the term that usually implies “I find.” Yet, there is another form of the word that implies that the subject at once becomes the object. . . in other words, an emergent subobjectivity. This concept always occurs at the spur of the moment as a response to a particular encounter – in this sense, it’s kairotic. But there’s another duality at work here. Not only is the rhetor producing discourse relevant to the situation at hand, the situation at hand also produces the rhetor. In other words, the subject works on and is worked on by (18) the situation.
Sophistic Movement
First, Hawhee traces Kairos the immortal through an investigation into sculpture from antiquity. Through his representations, Hawhee further demonstrates how Kairos was in the right moment. She then discusses how Kairos’ corporeal representations in antiquity point to 1) an embodiment of rhetorical movement. Next Hawhee ties this “rhetorical movement” to Gorgias’ masterful use of rhythm. Next she illustrates how all of Gorgias’ tropes (metaphor, hypallage, apostrephein, etc.) were verbal representations of movement. In the Encomium, Hawhee finds a duplicity of movement. Gorgias suggests that the power (dunamis) of logos is responsible for Helen’s flight to Troy. In so doing, he demonstrates the dunamis of logos itself – by convincing the crowd. .. by having them “Listen as I turn” from one argument to another. In this turn, they are all moving, all in-between.
Intermezzo
In the intermezzo, the be-between of dualisms is where you find kairos. Hawhee draws a distinction between kairos and exigence by explaining exigence’s allegiance to a two step process: 1)decode the rhetorical situation from the outside and 2) consciously select appropriate arguments. The kairotic is the moment of emergence that disrupts this linear path. Kairos is also a part of the rhetorical encounter itself (read ambience/environment from Rickert), and is shaped as such. Because Kairos is the moment of decision, he is usually depicted with razors so that he can designate (and clip appropriately) the “encounter between self and other” (25). In Gorgias’ choice of divergent discourses in the Encomium (Helen is a goddess, she’s a witch, she’s swayed by language, or was it force? etc.), he removes ontological certainty in favor of a conjunction of forces (these are the many, many reasons why Helen isn’t guilty). This is not a negation of guilt on the part of Helen; rather, it’s a negation of the truth of guilt. Hawhee provides analogs between this and the Dissoi Logoi for the non-existence of truths. This is consistent with D&G’s concept of “And” (See 1000 Plateaus, pg. 98) or the ever-multiplying ontologies of extension through “and.”
The Gorgianic Logos-Dunamis Complex
In this section, after tracing the use of pharmakon through Gorgias’ Encomium and Derrida’s Dissemenation, Hawhee makes the argument that the dunamis (power) of logos is its capacity to effect change. In this sense, the dunamis of logos produces reality because it produces power. According to Hawhee, “linking dunamis to a productive notion of power yields a different reading of Gorgias’ notion of discourse. . . . Gorgias’ comparison of the power of speech to drugs might be read as a suggestion of the ‘can-do-ness’ (dunamis) of speech. The function of logos, then, resides in its relations, at the specific junctures where it encounters and is encountered by other forces” (30). The key here is that “the dunamis of logos, like the bodily arts of pharmacology and athletic training, emerges in the encounter itself” (31).
In closing, Hawhee notes that “I have suggested ‘invention-in-the-middle’ as an alternative mode of rhetorical invention, one that depends on a reshaping of rhetoric itself. This particular reshaping invokes the movement of discourse rhetoric’s betweenness and the productive dimension logos’s power. . . . Rather than the five-step program (invention, style, arrangement), the cannons would cluster around ‘ands’ held in tension and enacted only through movements – or turns – of discourse. . . . It is only through the timely kairotic encounter that ‘turns’ happen, different ethoi emerge and logos becomes actions. . . words make themselves deeds” (32).
Major Influences:
White, Eric Charles. Kaironomia: On the Will-to-Invent. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.
Poulakos, John. Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
Miller, Carolyn. “Opportunity, Opportunism, and Progress: Kairos in the Rhetoric of Technology” Argumentation 8 (1994): 81-96).***
Young, Richard, and Yameng Lieu. Introduction. Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Invention. Ed. Richard E Young and Yameng Liu. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 1994.***
Methods/Methodology:
1. Close textual analysis in translation
2. Create a method from an existing concept
Key Issues/Questions:
1. How do we come to invention – from exterior or interior forces?
2. Are these forces/matter a priori or invented in the in-betweeness of experience?
3. How is Gorgianic rhetoric a site of investigation for kairotic moments?
