Review of Ikea by Zizek, Wittgenstein and Kripke

According to Open AI

Setting: The labyrinthine interior of an IKEA store on a quiet afternoon. Tall warehouse shelves tower in the background. Showroom displays of living rooms and kitchens sprawl in every direction. Saul Kripke, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Slavoj Žižek stand near the store entrance, squinting at a map of the store layout under the fluorescent lighting.

Žižek: (adjusting his messy shirt as he peers at the sign) Ah, the BILLY bookcase – truly the proletariat of bookcases! Millions of identical units, each proudly called Billy. You know, in the grand ideological fantasy of IKEA, every bookcase can be your friend named Billy, offering a sense of familiarity. The name is part of the marketing fantasy: you’re not buying just any shelf, you’re buying Billy, a humble servant for your books.

Wittgenstein: The meaning of “BILLY” is indeed in its use here. In ordinary language, Billy might be a boy’s name, but in this form of life – an IKEA store – BILLY means bookcase. It's a bit like a private language shared by millions of IKEA shoppers. If a lion could speak IKEA, would we understand it? (He smirks slightly at his own joke.)

Kripke: (nods and taps the product tag thoughtfully) So the name BILLY is a proper name for this design, used across all IKEA stores. As a philosopher of language, I wonder: does BILLY refer to the same essential bookcase in every possible world? In Naming and Necessity I argued that names are rigid designators – they pick out the same object wherever that object exists. So, is every BILLY the same in the space of IKEA’s possible worlds? Or is each assembly a new individual?

Žižek: This is the brilliance of the IKEA universe: it creates a self-contained ontology. Billy is necessarily a bookcase as long as you’re in this IKEA world, yes. But step outside, and it's just a pile of wooden boards given a friendly name. (He gestures dramatically to an assembled BILLY unit on display.) You see, the name humanizes the commodity. Ideology at work! It’s like how we name our hurricanes or personal devices – here, a bookshelf gets a human name so you feel a kinship.

Wittgenstein: (leans in to inspect the bookcase) The kinship is practical too. Look, the little tag even instructs us in a form of life: “BILLY, birch veneer, 79.99.” It’s a tiny narrative – a name, a material, a form of life as furniture, and a price. A whole story in a few words. The use of language here is to entice and guide our form of life called “shopping.”

Kripke: Still, I'm tempted to ask if the birch veneer is an essential property of BILLY or an accidental one. In a counterfactual scenario – say, possible world 47 – if BILLY were made of oak, would it still be BILLY? Is the identity tied to the form or the substance?

Wittgenstein: Saul, it might be more useful to just look at how people actually use the word. (He watches a young couple discussing two bookcases.) See, they’re saying “Let’s get a Billy.” They’re not concerned with possible worlds; they’re engaged in the language-game of picking furniture. The essence of the bookcase is in the role it plays for them, not in some metaphysical substrate.

Žižek: (laughs quietly) Yes, yes. To the consumers, what matters is the fantasy of a well-organized home library that BILLY promises. The ideological dimension is more potent than any rigid designator. They desire the idea of a Billy bookcase – an affordable, democratic promise of order in domestic life. The name Billy is like a fetish that stands in for that fantasy of intellectual organization.

[ Stage Direction: The trio begins to follow the arrows on the floor, pushing a squeaky shopping cart that Wittgenstein grabbed near the entrance. They pass through a mock living room display. Žižek absentmindedly pokes at a faux houseplant; Kripke straightens a picture frame that was slightly askew.* ]

Wittgenstein: (stopping in front of a LACK side table display) Now this piece here is labeled “LACK”. A table named Lack – how peculiar. In English that word means absence, but here it's the name of a product. We have to be careful: the meaning of “LACK” at IKEA isn’t a shortage of something; it’s a sturdy little table. This is a perfect example of how meaning is use. In the language-game of IKEA, “LACK” is not a verb or a noun for deficiency, but a handy flat-pack coffee table.

Kripke: (chuckles dryly) It’s an especially unfortunate name for a table, if you ask me. One hopes it doesn’t lack stability. Perhaps the marketing department wasn't concerned with the English meaning at all. To them it's just a sequence of letters, perhaps a Swedish nuance we rigidly designate now as this table model. Here, the name “LACK” picks out this design in our furniture universe. In any case, the table certainly doesn’t lack corners – ouch! (He rubs his shin, having bumped into the sharp corner of a LACK table on display.)

Žižek: (eyes gleaming with a mix of mischief and revelation) Ah, how delightful! The table named LACK. You realize, of course, the psychoanalytic significance? In Lacanian theory lack is fundamental – it’s what generates desire. So here we have a table literally named Lack, as if inviting us to fill an absence in our living room and in our soul. It’s brilliant! This little object is silently saying: “Your life is missing something… purchase me to complete the picture!” But of course, once you have it, you inevitably feel something is still missing. That's ideology for you – promising fulfillment, but ensuring the desire continues. (He pats the LACK table affectionately, as if it were a pet embodying existential void.)

Wittgenstein: (raises an eyebrow, half-amused)* Slavoj, sometimes a table is just a table. In our shared form of life called “furnishing a home,” perhaps the only lack here is a place to put your coffee mug. Not every absence is an abyss of desire.

Žižek: True, true – but you must admit the symbolism is rich! (He grabs the tiny tag on the table.) See, “LACK – $12.99.” It’s practically a surplus enjoyment bargain. The price is so low it’s like they’re saying “Go ahead, indulge in this minor enjoyment without guilt.” The affordability is part of the ideology – enjoyment on a budget, sanctioned by the big Other of consumer society.

Kripke: (peers down an aisle lined with towering racking shelves full of flat-pack boxes) Shall we continue? The map says KALLAX shelves are in the next section. I need a new bookshelf myself. The arrows on the floor suggest a direction – quite rigidly, I might add.

Wittgenstein: These arrows are like rules in a rulebook, guiding our actions. Following them is a kind of form-of-life. (He follows obediently, then stops to let a bewildered family with a cart pass by.) It's interesting – if one person decided to go against the arrows, it would feel almost like breaking the rules of grammar.

Žižek: Yes! To walk backwards through IKEA is a minor act of resistance against the imposed order. But even that rebellion is anticipated. Notice how the design gently nudges us: We flow from sofas to shelves to kitchen wares in a preordained narrative. It's like the Hegelian dialectic of shopping – thesis: you have a need; antithesis: you wander through temptations; synthesis: you come out with a trolley full of tealights you never planned to buy. (He snickers.) The ideology here is so strong that even your impulses are choreographed.

[ Stage Direction: They arrive at an aisle where towering shelves hold disassembled furniture in flat boxes. A large sign overhead reads “KALLAX” in bold letters. They crane their necks, scanning the racks for a specific item number.* ]

Kripke: Ah, KALLAX, the versatile shelving unit. Let’s see... (he reads aloud from a slip of paper) “Article 002.758.48, KALLAX, white, 4-cube shelf.” The name KALLAX presumably refers to the form of this shelf, regardless of color or size. It's interesting: all these products are identified by names that behave almost like proper nouns. KALLAX rigidly designates this particular design across all variations. Even if you paint it red or stretch it to 8 cubes, it’s still KALLAX. The name sticks to the essence of the design.

Wittgenstein: We should be careful with the word “essence” here. Does KALLAX have an essence beyond how we use it? If someone takes a KALLAX shelf and uses it as a room divider or a makeshift podium, is it still the same KALLAX in use? The use might change – and along with it, perhaps what we call it. Language is fluid that way.

Žižek: (climbing a little on the lower rack to reach a box) Essence or not, what fascinates me is how these boxes represent possibility. Each flat-pack is a promise of a fully formed object, but only if you follow the instructions and do the labor. It’s like buying an idea, a platonic ideal of a shelf, that you must then instantiate through sweat and tiny Allen wrenches. There’s a metaphor here for ideology: the product is sold with an image of a beautiful shelf in a cozy home, but the reality demands work – your work. They have cleverly made the consumer into a worker.

Wittgenstein: The assembly instructions are particularly intriguing. They’re almost entirely wordless pictograms. A whole language without words, just illustrations – a universal language for customers of all tongues. It’s practically a hieroglyphic language-game. One might say, “What can be shown, cannot be said.” IKEA seems to have taken that literally.

Kripke: (a flat-pack box halfway pulled off the shelf, as he contemplates Wittgenstein’s point) Indeed. The instructions show you how to assemble the pieces, but never say it in words. Perhaps they assume names and propositions would only confuse things across languages. Instead, they rely on depiction. It reminds me of your Tractatus, Ludwig – the idea that a proposition can picture a fact. Here, the booklet’s pictures attempt to picture the assembled furniture. If I weren’t so busy worrying whether I can lift this box, I’d applaud the semiotics.

Žižek: And let’s not forget the notorious IKEA effect – the psychological phenomenon where people value an object more because they built it themselves. By making us assemble the KALLAX, IKEA conscripts us into its ideology of DIY happiness. We become proletarians of our own households, yet we oddly take pride in it: “Look at this shelf, I built it, it’s part of me!” It’s genius – the unpaid labor is transformed into a source of pride. Marx would either cry or applaud. (He wipes imaginary tears with a dramatic flourish.)

Wittgenstein: (smiles thinly as he helps Kripke lower the heavy KALLAX box onto the cart) Be careful there. We wouldn’t want to reenact the parable of the Tractatus wardrobe – where one builds a ladder to reach the top shelf and then discards it after climbing up. Actually, this reminds me: after we assemble our thoughts here, we might find the conversation itself was a kind of flat-pack we assembled as we went along.

Kripke: That’s rather meta, Ludwig. But yes, assembling philosophy or furniture, one piece at a time... (he pats the large box now sitting in their shopping cart) Perhaps we should take a break before considering any further purchases or profound insights. All this talk of assembly has made me aware of another basic need – hunger. I saw a sign for the cafeteria back near the elevator. Swedish meatballs, anyone?

Žižek: Ah! The famous Swedish meatballs – truly the final lure of the IKEA experience. The promise of meatballs at the end of the maze is like the reward for our consumerist pilgrimage. Let’s indulge. As a Slovenian, I have a soft spot for Balkan meatballs, but I will analyze the Swedish variety with equal fervor.

[ Scene Transition: The three philosophers navigate to the IKEA cafeteria, trays in hand. They each have a plate of meatballs with lingonberry sauce and a small drink. They sit around a minimalist dining table (possibly another display item with a tag still on it). The atmosphere is calmer here, with other shoppers quietly enjoying their food.* ]

Wittgenstein: (stabbing a meatball with his fork, inspecting it as if it were a philosophical puzzle) There’s something comforting about this portion of our journey. It's a form of life I recognize: sitting at a table, eating a meal. No tricky language-games here, just simple use of a fork and knife. And yet, I wonder: when we call these meatballs, what are we actually referring to? The shape? The ingredients? The concept? If a vegetarian calls them “plant-based protein spheres,” are we still playing the same language-game? (He pops the meatball in his mouth thoughtfully.)

Kripke: The name “Swedish meatball” is interesting. Is it a rigid designator for this particular recipe – meat, spices, gravy – or could any nation’s variation answer to that name? In a possible world where Sweden had no meatballs, would “Swedish meatballs” just refer to something else entirely? (He takes a bite.) Hmm. These taste necessarily of beef and pork... although I hear one can buy vegetarian Swedish meatballs too. So the name might refer to a category rather than a single essence. Perhaps “Swedish” here is more of a historical descriptor than a necessity.

Žižek: (already halfway through his plate, gesturing with his fork) You know, the truly psychoanalytic moment is right here: we are indulging in the reward at the end, the famous meatballs, and telling ourselves it was all worth it. This is the fantasy of completion – as if now, having eaten, we have achieved the purpose of our journey. It’s like finishing a great novel and feeling a temporary catharsis. But I would argue the real ideological operation is that the meatballs make you forget the toil of the furniture shopping. They want you to associate IKEA with this warm, satiated feeling. It’s the store saying, “We’ve fed you, now you owe us your loyalty.”

Wittgenstein: Or perhaps it’s less sinister: eating together is a basic human form of life, a simple pleasure. Not everything is a devious ideological plot, Slavoj. Sometimes a meatball is just a meatball, to paraphrase Freud very loosely. (He smiles, sipping his lingonberry juice.)

Žižek: (grins and points his fork at Wittgenstein as if to make a grand proclamation) Aha, but Freud would retort: sometimes a meatball is not just a meatball! Consider: these meatballs are the objet petit a of the IKEA journey – the unattainable object of desire that keeps you moving forward. They symbolize comfort, home, the end goal. The entire time we wandered among couches and cabinets, some part of us was thinking, “at least I’ll have those meatballs soon.” It's the unconscious motivation they don’t advertise but implicitly promise.

Kripke: If I recall, Slavoj, you once said the problem with enjoying something is that it becomes a duty – “the superego imperative to enjoy.” Are you suggesting we’ve been commanded to enjoy these meatballs by the IKEA superego? (He gestures to a poster on the wall cheerfully advertising the meatballs at $5.99 a plate.)

Žižek: Exactly! The poster might as well say, “You must enjoy our signature meatballs now!” And we oblige, happily. It’s a benign command, of course – far be it from me to complain about savory gravy. But it epitomizes the paradox of modern consumer life: we are free to choose, but everything is so well orchestrated that we choose exactly what’s expected. We reached the finish line and claimed our reward, like lab rats getting a cheese treat. Dry, delicious Swedish cheese... or in this case, meat.

Wittgenstein: (shrugging with a small grin) I won’t overthink it. The meaning of this meal is in the eating. In our current language-game, “to enjoy meatballs” just means to savor them and maybe remark on their taste. And I do enjoy them. They’re quite good – a bit heavy on the allspice, perhaps.

Kripke: I find myself agreeing. Necessarily or contingently, these meatballs are good. (He dabs his mouth with a napkin.) I also notice, we haven’t actually bought any furniture yet besides that KALLAX shelf in the cart. Are we going to check out with just one shelf after all this philosophical journey?

Žižek: Perhaps that is fitting. We traversed the entire IKEA cosmos, analyzed it to pieces, yet we emerged relatively unencumbered by actual commodities. It’s a bit subversive, isn’t it? To consume the experience but purchase minimal goods. We are the ones productively assembling ideas, while denying the store its full victory over our wallets. (He winks conspiratorially.) Though I might grab a plush toy on the way out – for research purposes, of course. They have a cute shark, what’s its name... BLÅHAJ?

Wittgenstein: (laughing softly in a rare moment of open humor) Aha, careful – naming the shark might make you emotionally attached. Next you’ll be analyzing the ideological significance of soft toys in adult lives.

Žižek: Oh, I already have thoughts on that, believe me. But I’ll spare you – we’ve had enough theory for one shopping trip.

Kripke: Agreed. Sometimes it’s best to conclude before we confuse ourselves any further. As the saying goes, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” And perhaps, whereof one cannot assemble, thereof one must hire a handyman.

Wittgenstein: (raises his drink in a mock toast) To assembling both furniture and meaning – may we succeed in both, or at least find the process amusing.

Žižek: (raises an imaginary glass, since his cup is now empty) Cheers to that! And remember, the true absurdity is not that we talk about philosophy in IKEA, but that more people don’t. This place is ripe for it.

Setting: The three clink their plastic IKEA cups together in a playful toast. Around them, other customers continue their mundane meals, oblivious to the profound and absurd conversation that just took place. Our philosophers finish their meatballs, ready to face the checkout – and the task of assembling both the KALLAX shelf and the ideas they’ve gathered, once they’re back in the world outside the IKEA labyrinth.

[This dialogue was produced by Open AI’s GPT 4.0 Deep Search algorithm on July 16, 2025]