This essay explores two recently‐argued conceptions of the social‐political collective, Bitzer's notion that there is a timeless “public” possessed of a unique kind of “knowledge” and McGee's notion that there is an imminently present “people” possessed of an historically‐material “ideology.” It is argued that the ideas public and public knowledge are misconceptions of human society and of the function of discourse within it. The essay is in defense of the thesis that theories of “the public” are ideological, not philosophical, linked more with the political fortunes of an intellectual aristocracy than with the problem of creating a reliable theory explaining the relationship between rhetoric and human societies.
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