Margaret Price situates kairotic spaces to describe spaces that are informal, unnoticed areas in the academy where knowledge is produced and power is exchanged. They are real-time events where impromptu communication is required or encouraged with a strong social element and high stakes, these spaces are often in person.

Kairotic Spaces

Price suggests that this difference between how Megan is identified by her students and self-identified, including students speculating to each other about her disability identity is a facet of crip spacetime because by speculating aloud her students are asserting a separation as if they and Megan are not in the same place whilst still being in the same physical space.

Price and Kerschbaum interviewed Megan who self identifies as blind. Megan noted that students often are puzzled by how much Megan can see because she uses a white cane, wears dark glassess outside, but she also write on the board. Megan noted she often can hear students in her classes asking each other if they know how much Megan can see, but that students do not ask Megan this question directly. Megan also noted that often individuals assume blindness means an individual exists in a world of total darkness, without taking into consideration residual vision or how other sensory information can help fill in a field of perception.

Example of Difference in Identification

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Difference in Identification and Crip Spacetime

Megan noted that she deliberately didn't let students know she could hear them questioning how much she could see because of her position as a faculty in her twenties and a non-tenure-track faculty member. Not having a tenure-track position means that faculty positions are particularly precarious and often based on student teaching evaluations. 

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