Abstract
Abstract
This essay grows out of a larger project, one in which I look to account theoretically for ways in which underpowered groups creatively manage limited physical resourcesfor maximum rhetoricaleffect. My assumption in that larger project is that underpowered groups - groups whose publicness must be either granted or commandeered from same more greatly pouered group (e.g., government) - suchgroups encounter and engage constraints ofpublic rhetoric in way not necessarily of concern to the overpowered. For example, the mayor of any city can, at his or her choosing, call together a press conference inside City Hall to address tbe issue of homelessness: the homeless do not possess tbat same rhetorical option. Of the three terms central to that larger project - place, kairos, and delivery - it is upon kairos that I will focus this essay. My argument here is that. while I am respectful of the literature accounting for kairos as a rhetorical concern in ancient Athens, most of that literature focuses on the etymology, philosophy, or theology of the term, Fully acknowledging that literature, I wish to add politial dimension, and propose that kairos becomes even more complex when coupled with perhaps the most Significant political development in the democratization of classical Athens: isegoria, or the right of any citizen to address the Assembly.