Sex, drugs, and disease: A Gramscian analysis of AIDS discourse in the American media

This paper examines the ideological diversity evidenced in discourse about AIDS in the popular American print media within a framework of Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony. By identifying several "discourses" on AIDS, I explore how they are distinct, what they reveal of the underlying ideologies of their promulgators and to what extent they overlap. An extended discussion of specific metaphors and rhetorical strategies characteristic of a hegemonic discourse, propagated by certain governmental agencies and mainstream news magazines, is contrasted with alternative discursive strategies employed by the gay/lesbian press, the liberal press and the Catholic Church. Moreover, areas of ideological tension within the hegemonic discourse are revealed, as well as points of intersection between "separate" discourses. Finally, the ideological complexity manifest in this discursive field is brought to bear on Gramscian theory which is found to be somewhat limiting in its implication of a dualistic opposition between domination and resistance