ABSTRACT
Against Adjustment It isn't surprising that so many people who have got used to this society resist social analysis of literary forms. The forms of accepted analysis, and the judgments that go with them, are part of the deep accommodation to an orthodox consciousness. This doesn't exclude the possibility of local amendment and dissent, which come through as a sort of pragmatic honesty. Superficially, we have plenty of controversy, but much of it resembles what passes for controversy in politics. This last case has been particularly in evidence on television since the election was announced. It can seem extraordinary that at a time like this, and with three available channels, there is virtually no political argument we can turn on and watch. But the absence is overlaid by a surfeit of its substitute: personal display and abuse by projected leaders; selected comparative arguments, in a form that looks like but isn't statistics, at the margins of issues. What is not publicly argued is the basic structure of the society, and the possible policies within and beyond it. But then this is not a failure of technique, any more than it is what some people call the necessary vulgarity of the hustings. The limitation of real argument, and the careful production of apparent controversies, are not technical choices, but real ones. Indeed the form of what during this kind of election is called politics needs analysis in much the same way as a literary or dramatic form, which embodies experience in a very particular way, carrying its own values within and beyond the apparent action.
