The Political Unconscious

This chapter outlines the method of applying Jameson’s analysis of nineteenth-century literature to journalism of the same period. It explains how reporting of poverty and protest can be a socially symbolic act and its political unconscious can be unearthed by assessing the ideological, societal and historical levels in the copy. I argue that, rather than being the first witness to history or an objective, even verbatim, account of events, the journalistic copy is, in fact, saturated in ideology. The chapter outlines how the study examines the strategies of containment as they manifest in the politically and commercially competitive Manchester Guardian, Manchester Courier and Manchester Examiner and Times. Each newspaper produced journalism as a socially symbolic act by providing imaginary solutions to poverty, while reporting protest, with repeated use of the ideologeme distress, and even in the form of the news copy itself.