Arendt defines the political realm as the space where people appear publicly and engage in speech and action—what she calls the "public sphere". It's all very noble and ancient Athens-y, the kind of thing that assumes people have time to be eloquent and healthy on marble steps.
But Hedva? Hedva flips the script like she’s been waiting her whole sick life.
💣 The Critique:
Hedva points out that Arendt’s definition systematically excludes the chronically ill, the disabled, the poor, the traumatized, and anyone else who literally can’t show up in a town square to hold a protest sign or make a speech. If your body or mental state keeps you from "appearing" in that visible way, Arendt's framework considers you non-political. You disappear.
Hedva writes:
“If being able to participate in protest is a condition for political legitimacy, then I—and millions of others—are illegitimate.”
Oof. That line hits like a rubber bullet to the ribs.
🛌 Visibility and Erasure:
Hedva isn’t just criticizing the abstraction. They’re saying this erasure happens in real time. If you’re sick in bed, you’re seen as passive. You're not heroic. You're not loud. You’re not covered by the press. You’re not even covered by most definitions of what counts as politics.
But pain is political. And so Hedva proposes that care is a form of resistance. Not because it’s soft, but because it’s hard. It defies capitalist expectations of independence and productivity. You know, all the stuff that Arendt politely ignores while sipping metaphysical tea in her orderly polis.
🎯 Final Punch:
Where Arendt glorifies the power of speech and public action, Hedva forces us to look at the power in survival. She calls this the revolution of the sick woman. It’s a critique of Western thought itself, sneaking up from a hospital bed like a theory ninja.
🕰 What is Kairos?
Kairos (Greek: καιρός) means the right or opportune moment—a kind of sacred or qualitative time, unlike chronos, which is boring ol’ tick-tock clock time. It’s the time of mood, intuition, and crisis. Kairos doesn’t care about your schedule; it arrives, uninvited, and changes everything.
🎭 How Hedva Uses Kairos
In How to Tell When We Will Die, Hedva uses kairos to explode traditional ideas of temporality, especially those baked into capitalism and medicine. You know, the ones that say:
“Heal in this timeframe. Be productive by this deadline. Get better. Keep up.”
Yeah, kairos burns that calendar in a dumpster fire.
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Chronic illness and trauma don’t obey chronos. They relapse. They spiral. They return. Kairos gives us a frame for crip time—a nonlinear, disruptive mode of existing that doesn’t follow rules or corporate productivity logic.
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It’s also tied to mysticism and fate. Hedva leans into this: if you can’t control your body, you learn to move with atmospheres, not against them.
They write like someone who has spent years in bed with pain and ghosts—and figured out how time changes its shape when you’re not “getting better.”
🧨 Kairos vs. Chronos: A Petty Showdown
| Chronos (Arendt’s unspoken friend) | Kairos (Hedva’s co-conspirator) |
|---|---|
| Sequential, measurable, calendar-based | Atmospheric, sacred, eruptive |
| Time of productivity | Time of crisis and intuition |
| Used in capitalist systems | Used in feminist, mystical, crip theory |
| “Public protest starts at 6pm” | “Your body knows when it’s time” |
🧠 The Politics of Kairos
Using kairos as a lens, Hedva argues for:
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Rupture over routine: Political change doesn’t come from orderly progress—it comes in bursts, illness flares, riots, dreams, deaths.
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Honoring disrupted time: Kairos gives moral and political weight to people whose lives don’t move in straight lines—those sidelined by illness, grief, oppression, poverty.
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Cripping history itself: Kairos allows for marginalized bodies to reclaim the power to say, “This is when the story changes.”
So yeah—kairos is not just a fancy Greek word Hedva throws around. It’s the metaphysical stick they use to beat the crap out of linear narratives, therapeutic timelines
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