ABSTRACT
Shopping malls are cathedrals of consumption-a glib phrase that I regret the instant it slides off my pen. The metaphor of consumerism as a religion, in which commodities become the icons of worship and the rituals of exchanging money for goods become a secular equivalent of holy communion, is simply too glib to be helpful, and too attractive to those whose intentions, whether they be moral or political, are to expose the evils and limitations of bourgeois materialism. And yet the metaphor is both attractive and common precisely because it does convey and construct a knowledge of consumerism; it does point to one set of “truths,” however carefully selected a set.
