The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act is a 1981 book by
Fredric Jameson, a Marxist literary theorist. Often cited as a powerful overview and methodological guide, it is the work with which Jameson made his greatest impact. The book has been the subject of a commentary,
Jameson, Althusser, Marx (1984), by William C. Dowling, who believes that its main idea had been previously outlined by
Terry Eagleton and notes that it is influenced by such thinkers as
A. J. Greimas,
Northrop Frye,
Hans-Georg Gadamer, and
Claude Lévi-Strauss. Jameson's interpretive framework, including his neo-Lacanian idea of unconscious ideology and his invocation of structural causality to reconcile Marxist and post-Marxist perspectives, was largely borrowed from
Louis Althusser.