Coming to terms with the rhetoric of personal empowerment boils down to a choice between granting ontological priority to entities or relations. Enlightenment humanism begins with entities rather than relations, and the construction of power as property only makes sense within a logic that privileges entities. According to Enlightenment humanism, human beings, in their capacity as asocial, self-interested, stable entities, seek power-over before power-with. However, as N. Katherine Hayles argues, “Beginning with relation rather than pre-existing entities changes everything” (3). This relational ontology differs radically from the ontology of liberal humanism, which is premised on individuality, autonomy, objective distance, and so on. Hayles states further, “We do not exist in order to relate; rather, we relate in order that we may exist as fully realized human beings” (31). If relations are ontologically prior to entities, then power-over loses its rhetorical appeal. In short, my thesis is that hypertext theory, as well as Western culture in general, ought to shift from the rhetoric of personal empowerment to a rhetoric of relationality. With such a theoretical grounding, hypertext might actually facilitate democratization or a radical decentering of social or political power.