Performing Feminism through Kairotic moments.

These readings were placed at the perfect time in the syllabus and created a good follow-up to our class discussion last week. I worked with Parisa on this exploratory and we went through a couple of stages when developing our overall concept. We originally were going to mix both art installation and archive but, after we decided to use Tumblr as our platform of expression, we settled solely on an art installation. Our first draft that we presented to the class focused on how the terms democracy, kairos, and invention played a role in the overarching concept of feminism. However, after presenting, we were given some great suggestions and the meaning of our project took a different turn. We ultimately decided that we would focus on the idea feminism as a performance and how each moment captured is a kairotic expression. This definitely could have been done in multiple ways, for example following kairotic moments of the suffragette movement or prominent moments in women’s rights history, however due to the constraints of the platform and resources provided we settled on capturing kairotic feminist expressions within the era of 2000-2016.

     Subsequently, each kairotic moment needed to fall under how we were choosing to define feminism as “united by a basic set of principles…” (Foss & Griffin, p.4) which are: Equality, Self-Determination, and Immanent Value. On our tumblr page each image or text was then tagged with one of these terms. These terms served as a link for how to navigate the page and how we were deciding to display these kairotic moments. We defined Equality as an attempt to “replace the ‘alienation, competition, and dehumanization’ that characterize relationships of domination with ‘intimacy, mutuality, and camaraderie’” (Foss & Griffin, p.4). This concept resonated strongly within the root of our project as we saw expressions of feminism in all forms that ultimately fought for equal treatment, equal right, and equal respect. The images that are then tagged as “equality” should serve as examples and connections to this definition. This is also seen in the term self-determination as it “allows individuals to make their own decisions about how they wish to live their lives. Self determination involves the recognition that audience members are the authorities on their own lives and accords respect to others capacity and right to constitute their worlds as they choose” (Foss & Griffin, p.4). This underlying quality of respect for other individuals and trust of their choices is another aspect that we want to showcase. Images tagged with this term display respect, trust, and acceptance that their choices are valid. Finally, our last tag of immanent value promotes the idea that every individual “…is unique and necessary part of the universe and has value” (Foss & Griffin, p.4). This advocates for the message that each life has value and that “worth cannot be determined by positioning individuals on a hierarchy” (Foss & Griffin, p.4). Each image or text that is then tagged with this term should exemplify this basic value that each individual has equal worth, no one person is above another (combatting societal pressure that perpetuates the message that the hierarchy of wealth, role, and status means that one person has more value than another).

          Subsequently, an additional underlying aspect of out project is Foss and Griffin’s idea of invitational rhetoric. This emphasis on developing a deeper understanding into a variety of perspectives is essential as the images we’ve posted to the blog “perform” feminism in multiple ways. We also relied on Hart-Davidson et al.’s emphasis on democracy as it “…requires ‘real participatory structures in which actual people, with their geographical, ethnic, gender, and occupational differences, assert their perspectives on social issues within institutions that encourage the representation of their distinct voices’” (Hart-Davidson et al., p. 128). Our blog utilized this representation of democracy as individuals perform their feminism through images and texts to state their perspectives and opinions.

     One final aspect that our blog used was Hawhee’s emphasis on Kairos which we defined as “necessitate[ing] that thought will always be on the move to resist freezing”(Hawhee 18). This idea of kairos and, our emphasis on feminist kairotic moments, is linked to search for equality, self-determination, and immanent values. 

Our blog: http://exploratory4.tumblr.com/

Works Cited:

Foss, Sonja K, and Cindy L. Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for Invitational Rhetoric”Communication Monographs 62.1 (Mar. 1995): 2-18.

Hart-Davidson, William, James P. Zappen, and S. Michael Halloran. “On the Formation ofDemocratic Citizens: Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition in a Digital Age.” The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition, eds. Graff, Walzer, Atwill, Albany: SUNY, 2005. 125-140.

Hawhee, Debra. “Kairotic Encounters.” Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention, eds. Janet M.Atwill and Janice M. Lauer. Knoxville: U Tennessee P, 2003.