Kelly A. Myers' "Metanoia and the Transformation of Opportunity" uses the Metanoia and Kairos relationship as a rhetorical metaphor. However, I believe that, at times, she takes this metaphor too far. She claims that "acknowledging the presence of the‘heart’ in metanoia highlights the mind-body partnership at work in the concept" (8). In other words, in order to partner, the mind and the body must be
separate in the first place, resembling the division and partnership of
Metanoia and Kairos. Myers describes two images of Metanoia and Kairos: Girolamo da Capri's Chance and Penitence, and Giorgio Vasari's L'Occasione. In each of these images, Myers claims that Metanoia and Kairos are merged but also separate, implying collaboration and division. Myers' emphasis on "the mind-body partnership" causes what she acknowledges as a blurring of the distinctions between "mind, body, emotion, and logic" (17). However, it is unclear why she makes these divisions. For instance, why would emotion be separate from the body and logic be separate from the mind?
Myers' also makes a leap that I find problematic. She glosses over the fact that Metanoia most often appears with the female Ocassio and not with the male Kairos(4). I feel like the gender change is an important issue because it may lend itself to monism rather than dualism. If the figures are both female, then there is less divsion between the two, leading to the argument that, instead of being separate entities, they are both a part of each other. For instance, Giorgio Vasari's L'Occasione could be interpreted as a single figure due to the fact that the title only references Ocassio and not Metanoia, causing the audience to infer who the second woman is and to think of her only in terms of Ocassio.
In addition, Myers' text is very repetitive, and it often seems that she is repeating, unnecesarily, her major claims that "in metanoia, mind and body, feeling and intellect, collaborate in creating new knowledge and perspective" (8). I know that this may seem like a minor complaint, but it is something that bothered me throughout the reading.
