The Australia Council for the Arts, state Arts ministries, Humanities faculties, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) should not force taxpayers to fund work that explores the desert of identity and rejoices at mirages. Today, one encounters examples of identity culture in multiple artistic fields. “Join us to explore the meaning of identity,” wrote the Director of the 2016 Melbourne Writers Festival on the program’s welcome page. The Director of the Melbourne Conservatorium, Gary McPherson, lists identity among his principal research topics. Pamela Burnard, a Cambridge professor and Melbourne University alumnus, considers identity of supreme importance. According to Burnard, academics and music teachers must “understand the voices and the multi-voicedness of students” and celebrate “diverse creativities” for the sake of an “emergent ecology.” (I do not know what this means.) John Gray, the well-known critic of liberal humanism, referred to Burnard’s ilk as members of “increasingly marginal universities.” The more that twenty-first-century societies lose interest in the Humanities, the more Humanities academics pretend to address everyone, promote social participation, and …