ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how the fluid world articulated by Bauman, Giddens, and Beck matters for rhetoricians. Using the Harry Potter fan community and public as an example, the chapter argues that fluidity impacts communities, publics, and public culture in three ways: online communities ground important public action; public values invoked by rhetors are no longer limited to explicitly political institutions; and rhetorical circulation and invention occurs in ways that are fluid, horizontal, and networked. Ultimately, the social ties, communities, and publics that ground rhetorical action and circulate rhetorical artifacts look different in a fluid world.
