We are rhetoric. Get over it!

This chapter will argue that our notion of the term publics, along with many other notions, is very much a production of the technology of how we are persuaded to see the world -- a technology which sometimes goes by the name of rhetoric. It will be argued that this production is not properly understood. The chapter will attempt to address this deficiency in a way which some might find controversial. The controversy will be in the suggestion of just how significant and how disregarded persuasive practices are in creating our subject positions (that is, in creating how we see the world and our place in it). The implication will be that, however reviled, dismissed or lampooned the venerable term rhetoric is, we are largely constructs of rhetoric and therefore need to pay more attention to this ancient and modern subject.