The humanities- in their conceptual and intellectual specificity, disciplinary rigor, and ethical, social, and political potential- are very much in need of defense and rearticulation in our time, particularly from a perspective that moves beyond the political and philosophical reductions of identity politics. Leaving aside polemics, Flynn asserts that discourses in the humanities will find real ethical-political purchase when they engage with the material events in art, literature, and social life that call for humanistic reflection.