Your home could look like this–read below for some fun ideas on how!/Image: Licensed Adobe stock, MISHELA.
Come sit next to me, Alt-design buffs!
When you look at the horrifying picture above, my guess is that as a member of the right-wing of the contemporary political spectrum in 2018, you immediately think, “That’s what I’m doing to the nation by supporting Trump and Trumpism.” And I’m guessing your very next thought is, “How can I get the inside of my abode, my personal non-democratic state, to look exactly the same way?! I know this because not only am I a fellow right-winger, as you, despite your doltishness, know already as I’m, Marla Stewman, the Interiors columnist at here at Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW), everybody’s least favorite–nay, the only–Alt-right lifestyle blog, but because we’re all good people (at least that’s what we have to tell ourselves). And good people want to destroy–deconstruct, in an orderly way and with a teensy bit of thought. Any more than a teensy bit of thought, however, and the next thing you know we’re actually making good life choices. We can’t have that!
Anywho, to give you some fun ways to do not a construction but a destruction project in your Alt-digs, I’ll review with you the principles school of literary criticism called Deconstruction and then offer some suggestions for you to instantiate it in your tacky, cheap design choices.
Related: Get some squash-based meal ideas for munching on as the right-wing quashes dissent.
Before We Begin
Deconstruction is a school of thought, philosophy, to be more precise, founded by Jacques Derrida. He based it on the theories of French linguist and founder of Structuralism, Ferdinand de Saussure. It focuses on language and how that faculty shapes not only the way we talk about things but indeed the way we think about that. To Saussure and Derrida, language is not simply our way of describing reality but it the words that make it up and the way we use them actually colors our experience of that which we seek to “merely” describe.
Get Out the Advil
Because you’re going to have a headache after I review the basics of Deconstruction. The person who laid these out for me so that I could understand them clearly for the first time was Professor Eugene Hammond when he taught at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Pretty Patterns
Idea: Deconstruction’s most basic tenet is that patterns are “inherently false and unstable and the forces of chaos will be stronger than an author’s [a designer’s, in this case] attempts to create order,” wrote Hammond in a course packet of ours from Enligsh 301 in the Falll of 1999. I assume this makes you froth at the mouth with rabid excitement.
Design: We all have a bed linen, an upholstery fabric, a drapery textile, 0r some such thing, in our homes that we’re particularly fond of on which is printed a lovely pattern, dear readers. I want you to go to that decor item now. Oh, let me back up. I want you to get a butcher’s knife out. Then, go to the aforementioned fabric. Now just start stabbing. The idea here is to lat waste to the pattern, so…well, even people as dunderheaded as you can see where I’m going with this, especially as I just said it.
We Belong Together
Idea: If you’re a good little Deconstructionist, (which I realize is unlikely, given that you a right-winger and thus pronouncing words of more than one syllable poses a significant challenge for you, but still…) you believe ” there is no metaphysics of presence, i.e., the fact that a word exists doesn’t mean a thing corresponding to that word actually exists…Deconstructionists regard all texts as merely plays of language.”
Desing: Now, if there is no metaphysics of presence, as Hammond says, it stands to reason, using the flawless logic of the Trump Era Trumpists, that there is, in fact, a sub-chemistry of presents. So, why not take a chemistry textbook, wrap it in clear cellophane and place it under your dining table.
Someone who is in his or her right mind (or Left mind) will at some point ask you, as they back out of your front door in fear of your crazy ass, “Um…why is there a gift-wrapped chemistry textbook under the table?”
That’s your cue to answer their question with a question, saying, “Well, because if there isn’t metaphysics of presence, then obviously there is a sub-chemistry of presents.”
The Ass Is the Symbol of Dems for a Reason
Idea: The above lunacy is a great segue into my next point, which is that Western thought is logocentric, in that it assumes (which makes a Democratic ass out of you and me) that because a word exists, a “real-world” referent for that word necessarily exists, according to Hammond.
Design: Well, this one’s easy. You simply sprinkle Legos™ around your house as if they were so many rose petals. Each time you or anyone else steps on one and curses loudly in pain, you say, “Hey, if Western philosophy weren’t logocentric, I wouldn’t have to scatter Legos all over my house as a reminder of this, now would I?”
Yes and No
Idea: Another point in Hammond’s list of the central principles of Deconstructionism is that Western thought tends to see life in terms of dualities, and these are generally an oversimplification of more nuanced reality.
Design: So, why not print out in 72-point bold font on pieces of paper, “FALSE OPPOSITION!” and then tape it up in applicable places around your home. Kitchen sink near the faucet where both hot and cold water come out? FALSE OPPOSITION SIGN! A major stairway in your home on which you descend from up to down? FALSE OPPOSITION SIGN! Any window in your home, which is a sort of liminal space between the supposed opposites of inside and outside? FALSE OPPOSITION SIGN!
Incomplete Miseducation
The above pointers on Deconstruction are by no means an exhaustive list of either Derrida’s points or Hammonds points about his points. Get it? No, well, I’m not really sure I do either, to be honest.
As I always like to say when discussing not home improvement but home worsening projects with people who clearly are so freaking stupid you can’t be trusted to pull their hands away from a hot stove–you, dear readers: I speak of you–given that you enjoy endlessly supporting someone who very, very clearly has your worst interests at heart–Trump, dear readers: I speak of Trump–be careful not to hammer your own thumb. It hurts like a mother. Also, don’t shit where you eat, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, a penny saved is a penny earned, and lots more homey, downhome, and yes, even Alt-home, aphorisms. You know, your home might as well look like as much of a ridiculous wreck as the country is thanks to the terrible, terrible, terrible things we’re together making happen to this U.S. of A. we claim to be patriots of.
Now, remember to shut the door on your way out—but don’t let it hit you on your ass!
Also: Get the deets on the three Alt-right blood sports you have to get in on now!
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