Abstract Whereas the postcritical conversation about student resistance often adopts a political or psychological perspective, this article argues for a rhetorical approach to understanding why students may resist the imperatives forwarded by critical pedagogies. Through an analysis of two cultural studies readers, this article suggests that we examine critical composition courses as pedagogical arguments that ask students to accept (and even embody) certain enthymematic messages about their subjectivity that they may be unable or unwilling to help construct, thus resulting in apparent resistance.