An Attempt at a Reply

Abstract This essay responds to the contributors to “The Radical Aesthetic Revisited.” It begins by sketching a history of the predicament in literary studies to which The Radical Aesthetic eventually responded. It then proceeds to respond to each contributor in turn, addressing their questions, elaborations, and quarrels with the book's work on aesthetics, affect, feminism, and psychoanalysis. It ends with two meditations. One, on close reading and the public humanities, begins by responding to writing by Jonathan Kramnick connecting close reading to the aesthetic cognition Armstrong advocates for in The Radical Aesthetic. It continues by considering the work that English studies might do in the public sphere. The second is an ekphrasis on Michelangelo's sculptures at the Medici tombs, a demonstration of the dreamwork done by art.