In this article, the author contends that the shift in the way public literacy instruction is talked about and enacted is not merely a semantic one designed to conceal liberal motives from the students--or at least it should not be. Rather, it aims to honor the ways that personal, private interests can construct and reconstruct the public sphere. By privileging the partisan "I" over partisan politics, interested publicism offers rhetorical access routes into the public sphere and thus the potential to expand what counts as the public interest and to "reframe the public debate" in ways that make one's own interests "more persuasive and resonant." Thus it encourages a kind of partisanship that holds more promise in the long run for a richer and more vibrant public both politically and rhetorically.