that existing models of rhetorical ethics need to be reconfigured to account for multimodality. Moreover, if teachers want to encourage ethical practices in students, they will need to find ways for students to explore the ethical challenges distinct to multimodality.
As we explore rhetorical ethics, however, we want to avoid the narrow and limiting construction of public rhetoric that sometimes results from the “goal of reaching a rationally motivated agreement” (Habermas, Moral 88). Too often, public-sphere theorists sacrifice important communicative practices in the name of the “rational.” Pathos, visuality, and even rhetoric itself are often excluded in rigid and impoverished understandings of public discourse as rational-critical argument. In this narrow model, there is little room for multimodality to flourish.
In chapter 7, therefore, we explore an alternative model in which public rhetoric is conceived broadly as “the making of culture” (Spellmeyer 7) or “poetic world making” (Warner 114). In this model, rhetoric becomes “the mobilization of signs for the articulation of identities, ideologies, consciousnesses, communities, publics, and cultures” (DeLuca 17). As such, rhetoric is more than a rational-critical means of shaping public opinion. It fundamentally shapes our identities and the way we experience the world. We see this alternate model as a useful foundation for establishing a richer tradition of multimodal public rhetoric.
Finally, in chapters 8 and 9, we attempt to bring all of these strands together, to synthesize the various facets of our argument about the practice and teaching of multimodal public rhetoric. We offer a close reading of one large-scale rhetorical intervention—the D Brand (an attempt by a non-profit organization to rebrand Detroit)—that attends to all of the considerations we have been exploring. The D Brand, we suggest, takes seriously the task of poetic world making and offers compelling strategies for confronting rhetoric as complex ecology.
In chapter 9 we describe a particular approach to teaching multimodal public rhetoric that attempts to address the various concerns raised throughout the book. This approach attempts to provide students with an expanded understanding of kairos, with opportunities to make kairotic assessments of modes, media, and technologies of production, reproduction, and distribution. It asks them to think beyond single modes and single compositions—indeed, to think beyond the moment of composition to the ways their work might circulate through channels that are simultaneously material (in their reliance on the body, on geography, and on technologies) and cultural (in their reliance on structures of sociality, ideology, and legitimation). We situate this approach in a tradition of teaching what Eberly calls the “praxis of rhetoric as a productive and practical art” (“Rhetoric” 290). Along with Rosa A. Eberly, James A. Berlin, Bruce McComiskey, and others, we hope that teaching rhetoric as productive art “can be a radically democratic act” that “can sustain publics and counterpublics—on campus and beyond campus” (Eberly, “Rhetoric” 290, 294).
PART I: Foundational Terms
1 Kairos and the Public Sphere
In this preliminary chapter, we explore kairos and the public sphere—two theoretical concepts that will inform discussion throughout the book. Tracing the ways these terms have been discussed in both historical and contemporary contexts helps demonstrate their usefulness for a theory of multimodal public rhetoric. Ultimately, we argue that both kairos and public sphere need to be reconfigured if they are to serve multimodal public rhetors effectively.
Definitions of Kairos
Virtually all sustained discussions of kairos begin by observing, as James L. Kinneavy does, that “kairos is a complex concept, not easily reduced to a simple formula” (“A Neglected” 85). In his introduction to Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis, Phillip Sipiora observes that
kairos is typically thought of as “timing” or “the right time,” although its use went far beyond temporal reference. . . . A fundamental notion in ancient Greece, kairos carried a number of meanings in classical rhetorical theory and history, including “symmetry,” “propriety,” “occasion,” “due measure,” “fitness,” “tact,” “decorum,” “convenience,” “proportion,” “fruit,” “profit,” and “wise moderation.” (1)
Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard (292) and Jane Sutton (413) each provide lists that are similarly various and copious. Kinneavy notes that to appreciate the full relevance of kairos for rhetoric, we need to take into account the “ethical, educational, epistemological, and aesthetic levels [of kairos], all of which are linked to each other” (“A Neglected” 87). In their explorations of kairos, rhetorical scholars have linked the concept to Sophistic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Ciceronian traditions (Hughes; Kinneavy, “A Neglected”; McComiskey, “Dissassembling”; Sipiora and Baumlin; Sutton). Kairos is a complex and richly generative concept that stubbornly resists simple definitions.
Many theorists emphasize that kairos includes both temporal and spatial dimensions, beginning with the original metaphors that inform the concept. Kinneavy asserts, “a second meaning of kairos was ‘the right place’ in addition to the right time” (“Revisited” 83; see also, Miller, “Kairos”; Sheard). Eric Charles White usefully addresses the various temporal and spatial metaphors that merge in the concept:
Kairos is an ancient Greek word that means “the right moment” or “the opportune.” The two meanings of the word apparently come from two different sources. In archery, it refers to an opening, or “opportunity” or, more precisely, a long tunnel-like aperture through which the archer’s arrow has to pass. Successful passage of a kairos requires, therefore, that the archer’s arrow be fired not only accurately but with enough power for it to penetrate. The second meaning of kairos traces to the art of weaving. There it is “the critical time” when the weaver must draw the yarn through a gap that momentarily opens in the warp of the cloth being woven. (13)
Richard Broxton Onians similarly explores the roots of kairos in weaving and in archery, noting that “Euripides refers to a part of the body where a weapon can penetrate to the life within” (343). White, Onians, and others establish that in addition to “the opportune moment,” kairos is the opening or gap that allows passage to a goal or desired destination.
Most contemporary accounts of kairos are explicitly informed by ongoing discussions of the rhetorical situation (see Bazerman; Miller, “Kairos”; Sutton). Kinneavy flatly asserts that “the concept of situational context” is “a modern term for kairos” (“A Neglected” 83). Many of these accounts draw specifically on the conversation about the rhetorical situation begun by Lloyd Bitzer in the inaugural issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric. Indeed, this debate has become so codified that Charles Bazerman refers to it as the “Bitzer-Vatz-Consigny debate” (174). Other theorists link kairos to rhetorical context via Kenneth Burke’s concept of scene and the pentad (e.g., Sheard; Herndl and Licona). After citing the work of Bitzer, Burke, and others, Kinneavy concludes: “All of these voices saying ultimately the same thing ought to convince us that some consideration in any rhetorical theory must be given to the issue raised by the concept of kairos—the appropriateness of the discourse to the particular circumstances of the time, place, speaker, and audience involved” (“A Neglected” 85). Sheard offers a concise encapsulation of many of these concerns in her summary of the concept:
Kairos is the ancient term for the sum total of “contexts,” both spatial (e.g., formal) and temporal (e.g., epistemic), that influence the translation of thought into language and meaning in any rhetorical situation. Kairos encompasses the occasion itself, the historical circumstances that brought it about, the generic conventions of the form (oral or written) required by that occasion, the manner of delivery the audience expects at that time and place, their attitudes toward the speaker (or writer) and the occasion, even their assumptions about the world around them, and so on. (291–92)
Kairos,
