This article addresses an impasse between rhetoric and composition practice and theory. On one hand, from the poststructural through the posthuman, our most vigorous theories challenge classical notions of selfhood and agency. On the other hand, from institutional assessment through writing about writing, composition’s most vigorous practices entail fairly traditional ideas about selfhood and agency. This piece crosses over the impasse by suggesting that “self” and “agency” are vital fantasies for composition, and that negotiating these fantasies is an ethical process. At its heart, I argue, composition is any ethical, collective working out of these fantastical concepts that helps adaptive individuals more freely emerge.

ABSTRACT Freedom is a contested concept, at once bound up with and promising transcendence of social bonds. This article examines the understanding of freedom particular to rhetorical theory, a troubled freedom that is the negotiation of constraint. Articulating this concept in negotiation of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “universal audience,” the article explores a key implication of troubled freedom for the governance of human persons. Given that human personhood is a rhetorical phenomenon, that persons emerge in flows of tendentious discourse, the article urges a rhetorical approach to democratic constitution writing. Constitution should be composed to foster the rhetorical capabilities of demoi.