Consumerism as a Survival Technique: Routine, Ritual, and Escape in the Liquid-Modern Poetry of Ginsberg, Sakutarō, and Dawe

Abstract

This article advances a Baumanian reading of consumerism as a psychological survival technique in three cross-cultural modern poems: Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California" (1955), Hagiwara Sakutarō's "Bar ni te" ("In a Bar," 1917), and Bruce Dawe's "Enter Without So Much as Knocking" (1962). Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity (2000), Liquid Fear (2006), and Consuming Life (2007), the study argues that the transition from a society of producers to a society of consumers has fundamentally reconfigured the human subject's relationship to commercial space, transforming market environments into surrogate sanctuaries designed to relieve what Bauman terms "liquid fear," an unanchored, ambient dread stemming from institutional instability and individualization. The article develops a three-dimensional analytical framework, Routine (habituated micro-transactions that provide cognitive stability), Ritual (symbolic consumption practices through which individuals attempt to construct identity), and Escape (high-arousal, anti-structural engagements aimed at temporarily suspending reality), to demonstrate how each poet maps the tragicomic logic of consumer capitalism: the promise of permanent emotional fulfillment through purchase, followed by the inevitable collapse of the commercial sanctuary and the intensified return of existential alienation. Through comparative close reading, the article reveals that despite differences in geography, language, and historical moment, all three poems diagnose the same structural pathology: the conversion of human vulnerability into market dependency, and the mistaking of commercial compliance for individual agency. The study contributes to consumer culture theory by synthesizing Bauman's sociological framework with literary analysis, demonstrating that poetry offers a uniquely precise diagnostic lens for analyzing the human cost of late capitalism.