Kairos as Environment

In his article, "Invention in the Wild," Thomas Rickert investigates the varying meanings and descriptions of "kairos" over time.  He points out that the original use of kairos had a spatial connotation, as Homer used it to refer to the "deadliest spot" on the body at which an arrow may strike.  While this went with later interpretations of kairos as a sort of window of opportunity, it also informs a certain importance on place.  Kairos exists not just as an opportunity, but as a specific opportunity in a specific place brought forth by a specific situation.  Rickert proceeds to trace the varying meanings of kairos through the ages, from spatial to temporal to contextual.  The main idea that he seems to be countering is the idea of kairos as it relates to an autonomous human subject:  that kairos isn't simply an opportunity that the rhetor seizes.  Rickert moves more toward the dispersion of the subject by painting kairos as not just as a contextual opportunity with an autonomous subject/rhetor attaining agency through acting; but rather he describes the "kairotic experience" as "one that encompasses all elements composting the situation."  From this stance, he goes on to emphasize how all the elements of a given situation (not just speaker and audience and opportunity) intermingle to call forth a response.  The rhetor (or actor) is not independent of the situation, but acts/speaks as a result of the kairotic web of relations which compel him (or enable him) to do so.  "(O)ur words and actions emerge as willed by kairos," as Rickert says.

Rickert uses the example of air traffic controllers to show how an environment produces kairos, and how the lines are blurred between subject/object in the response to the "kairotic moment."  The controllers do not simply act as a response to the environment (the common conception of kairos- acting in response to an opportune situation,) however they are not simply controlled by the environment either.  Subjectivity is dispersed into a web of interrelations which shape a moment that may be considered kairotic.  I found one particular line from Rickert helpful in capturing the general thrust of his argument:

The air traffic control center is a series of events in a specific environs of kairotic moments in a generative place, which form an ambient whole... the environs here are not just a material reality to which we adapt or which somehow "determine" us.  Instead, the environs are what enable us, but they enable inclusively of human beings, insofar as human beings are part of the environs.   Thus the emplacement of the controllers is essential to their activity, for the context makes all that occurs possible.... their choices are already immersed in the context in which they get played out.

When I consider kairos as a situation, an environ of interacting elements, it changes the way I view many things involving a "subject" or an actor.  Take the stage of improvisational comedy, for example.  One such show of "improv" comedy is "Whose Line is it Anyway?"  Actors get on stage and perform improvisation given a set of rules or situations.  The traditionally, "seizing an opportunity" mode of looking at kairos would say the kairos of the moment is the improvisational prompt, which the actors seize in an attempt to derive the desired response from their audience (here, laughter.)  However, when we look at kairos the way Rickert does, he would argue that the actors, the stage,the show, the audience (local and television,) the prompts, the television network, the host, the cultural context... all blend together to form kairos, which produces or calls forth a particular response/action from the actor.  In the scene below, the traditional (subjective or Platonic) way of looking at kairos would attribute all power and agency to the actor for his lines and the humor found there.  However, in looking at kairos the way Rickert does, we would understand that the situation itself, and all the elements involved, play a role in eliciting the humor that comes from the actor.  Not to say the actor does not himself choose to say the words he says, rather his choice is but one factor in a web of relations that form the kairotic moment.  In looking at things this way, Rickert seemingly takes a great deal of agency away from the actor and attributes it to kairos itself.  Perhaps it is not surprising then that we humans would rather look at things such as stage-comedy from a subjective standpoint and applaud the actor for his creativity and ability to respond to what we view as an opportune moment.  However, Rickert has a good point that we might understand kairos itself better if we were to look at it in terms of place, as well as context, situation, actors, audience, etc.