Because the protesters see themselves as modern inheritors of the Civil Rights movement, many people are curious about Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King, and the movie ties into conversations about protest and racial injustice throughout our society. The film Selma, released in December of 2014, may be seen as highly kairotic given the massive social movement that was then (and still is) under way in many American cities. With the real development of smartphones, wearable technology, and almost universal Internet connectivity, the film delivered its message right at the moment of a genuine revolution in our relationship to technology, making it highly kairotic. “The Matrix” was one of the first movies to take on the idea of human beings being wired (literally) into their computers and operating in a wholly digital world. Read any opinion piece in your local newspaper and you’ll find that the writers are trying to integrate their message with the day’s news and thus show the relevance of their opinions. Political essays and op-eds are almost always kairotic – or at least they attempt to be. But because the United States and Europe were hovering in between WWII and the Cold War, the issue of totalitarianism was very much in the public eye, making people much more receptive to Orwell’s book. George Orwell’s 1984 was published in 1949, around the same time that political theorists were beginning to develop the concept of “totalitarianism.” Orwell’s book explained the horrors of a totalitarian system using a compelling narrative approach that was much more accessible to readers than books of political philosophy. IV. Examples Kairos in Literature Example 1 That place and time affects the way they receive your communication, so it’s crucial to take it into account. Readers and listeners are not abstract entities, but concrete human beings who live in a certain place and time. Since rhetoric is about communication, you have to think about your audience – what they bring to the table, how they think about the issue, and how they’re likely to respond to your message. Kairos is important because audience is important. It raised questions about what effects this technology might have on our minds and societies people were becoming more aware of the higher rates of depression and loneliness in our society. The film was released at a time when it became normal for everybody to have smartphones, with artificial intelligence, like Siri. The 2013 film Her deals with issues of isolation, artificial intelligence, and the artificiality of life in a digital world. The concept of “too big to fail,” which was in the spotlight in 2013, was foreshadowed by the unruly behavior of large corporate conglomerations in Wilson’s time. This was highly kairotic because so many of the economic issues faced by Wilson were similar to those facing the country in 2013, when Americans were facing economic issues from the 2008 financial crisis. They marked the occasion by reading Wilson’s inauguration speech. In 2013, college campuses around the country celebrated the 100 th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration as president. Thus, in addition to its structure and eloquence, the Gettysburg Address was successful due to its kairos. The war became a moral quest, and suddenly the nation’s will to fight was restored. Lincoln’s speech gave them that higher purpose. But the horrors of the Battle of Gettysburg were so extreme and traumatic that the nation needed to believe that they were fighting for a higher purpose than constitutional politics. But by examining a few examples, we should be able to understand at least what it means to say the right thing at the right moment.īefore Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, most people in America thought of the Civil War as a fight over territory and federal law, and most people did not yet see it in abolitionist terms (i.e. To make matters even more complicated, kairos is somewhat subjective – what may be exactly the right moment for one reader or listener might be all wrong for someone else! Like “beautiful” or “persuasive,” “kairotic” is a partially subjective judgement. Whether or not text has kairos depends on its context. So what makes the moment “right”? And what makes a statement just “right” for a particular situation?Īs you might suspect, kairos is a complex concept, and not exactly a “device” or “technique” in the usual sense. In modern rhetoric, it refers to making exactly the right statement at exactly the right moment. It was exactly the right time to say or do a particular thing. Kairos (pronounced “KAI-ros”) in Ancient Greek meant “time” – but it wasn’t just any time.
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