'PATAPHYSICS:

THE POETICS OF AN IMAGINARY SCIENCE

CHRISTIAN BOK

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

f o r t h e degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Programme in English
York University
N o r t h Y o r k , Ontario

December 1 9 9 7

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PATAPHYS ICS :

THE FOETICS OF AN I M A G I N A R Y SCIENCE

by

C H R I S T I A N BOK
a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of
York University in partial fulfillrnent of the requirements for the
degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

O
1998
Permission has been granted to the LlBRARY OF YORK
C;NIVERSITY to lend or seIl copies of this dissertation, to the
NATIONAL L18RARY OF CANADA to microfilm this dissertation
and to lend or sel1 copies of the film. and to UNIVERSITY
MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this dissertation.
The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the
dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or
othenivise reproduced without the author's written permission.

ABSTRACT

'Pata~hssics: The Poetics of an Imaainarv Science is a

survey that attempts to describe a hypothetic philosophp-

the avant-garde pseudo-science imagined by Alfred Jarry.

'Pataphysics is a supplement to metaphysics, accenting it,
then replacing it, in order to create a philosophic
alternative, whose discipline can study cases, not of
conception, but of exception:

variance (anomalos), alliance

(syzuaia), and deviance (clinamen).

'Pataphysics

synthesizes the romantic schism between a literal,

scientized discourse and a figural, poeticized discourse,
and m y thesis suggests that this revision of the signifier
"science" by 'pataphysics is symptomatic of a postrnodern
transition in science from a paradigm of absolutism to a
paralogy of relativism.

Structured as a descriptive

explication, which emphasizes a theoretical perspective,

this survey is divided into five chapters:

the first

chapter recounts the history of the conflict between science

and poetry (in order to contextualize 'pataphysics within
the metaphysical philosophies of the past); the second
chapter examines the avant-garde pseudo-science of
'pataphysics itself ( i n order to contextualize 'pataphysics
within the anti-metaphysical meta-philosophies of the
present); and finally, the last three chapters discuss the
influence of 'pataphysics upon the poetics of its subsequent

successors (first, the Italian Futurists; second, the French

Oulipians; and third, the Canadian "Pataphysicians).

While

mg thesis focuses upon theories of textual poetics rather

than poetry itself (relyLng upon the kind o f Nietzschean

sophistries that have come to characterize postmodern

p h i l o s o p h y ) , m y thesis does nevertheless trive to be as

conceptually encyclopedic as 'pataphysics itself:

instead

o f normalizing 'pataphysics within one theoretical

perspective, this survey alludes intermittently to

'pataphysical enterprises that constitute exceptions to s u c h

a genealogy of Jarryites.

What is at stake is the status of

poetry in a world of science.

own viable truth?

poetic irony?

How might poetry reclaim its

How might science benefit from its own

For the postmodern condition, such questions

have already opened u p a novel space f o r speculative

imagination; hence, this survey presents itself as a kind of

primer for a future of possible reseerch.

PREFACE

T h e Museum of J u r a s s i c T e c h n o l o ~ si n Los A n g e l e s is a
s t r a n g e g a l l e r y , where i n c r e d i b l e v e r i t i e s i n t e g r a t e s o
p e r f e c t l y with b e l i e v a b l e u n t r u t h s t h a t a v i s i t o r m a s n o t
d e t e c t t h e p e c u l i a r s l i p p a g e from f a c t t o hoax.

Wilson, the

c u r a t o r , h a s r e b u i l t t h e Wunderkammern of m e d i e v a l a r c h i v e s ,
p r e s e n t i n g c a b i n e t s and v i t r i n e s ,
specimens:

n o t o n l y of

f u l l of b i z a r r e c u r i o s a - -

M s o t i s l u c i f u a u s ( a b a t whose s o n a r -

s y s t e m c a n be modulated t o create a p e r t u r e s t h r o u g h
s u b s t a n t i v e b a r r i e r s ) , b u t o f M e a a l o p o n e r a f o e t e n s (an a n t
c a n be c o n t r o l l e d b y f u n g a l p a r a s i t e s f o r

whose n e r v e - s y s t e m

replicative purposes).

W i l s o n does n o t s i m p l y r e p e a t t h e

grotesque s p e c t a c l e of R i p l e y , s i n c e t h e museum d o e s n o t
p r e s e n t t h e t r u t h o f the a b s u r d w i t h t h e command:
it o r n o t ! - - i n s t e a d ,

believe

t h e museum p r e s e n t s t h e t r u t h as i t s e l f

absurd with the question:

w h a t i s i t t o b e l i e v e o r not?

Weschler o b s e r v e s t h a t "Wilson has[ . . . ] p i t c h e d h i s

museum a t t h e very i n t e r s e c t i o n o f t h e p r e m o d e r n and t h e

postmodern" ( g o ) ,

inserting the visitor into the interstice

b e t w e e n wondering-at a n d w o n d e r i n g - w h e t h e r l - - a

g a p into

w h i c h t h i s s u r v e y w i s h e s t o i n s e r t i t s own r e a d e r .
Wilson calls

What

" J u r a s s i c t e c h n o l o g y , " w e might c a l 1 " J a r r y i t e

' p a t a p h y s i c s W - - a science of imaginary s o l u t i o n s ,

i n which

the c r i t i c wishes not o n l y t o study, but also t o e v o k e ,

cases of exceptional singularity.

Like Jarry (who wilfully

occupies an ambiguous interzone between ratiocination and

hallucination), Wilson hopes to imbricate the technical
truth of modern science with the medieval magic of poetic
wisdom.

This survey, likewise, strives to indulge in s u c h a

figura1 project, s i n c e it too proposes the potential

existence of a, heretofore chimerical, science.

'Pataphysics represents a supplement to metaphysics,

accenting it, then replacing it, in order to create a
philosophic alternative to rationalism.
performed, Jarry has predicted:

What Wilson has

the disappearance of

scientificity itself when reason is pushed to its own

logical extreme.

Such a 'pataphysical qualification of

rational validity is symptomatic of a postmodern transition

in science frorn absolutism to relativism, When even time

itself fades away into spectacular uncertainty, the very
idea that an historical technology might be called
"jurassic" no longer seems wholly absurd (since w e can now

imagine a futuristic apocalypse, in which cloning might

allow a human tu coexist with a resurrected tyrannosaur-j u s t as cinema

has cloned the image of an actual thespian

and spliced it with the image of an unreal sauropod).2

'Pataphysics is speculative, waiting for its chance to

happen, as if by accident, in a themepark of scientific

viii
conception.

Like the museum of Wilson, this thesis on Jarry

attempts to scramble the jurassic sequence of history so

that what is extinct in the past can be called forth again
out of its context into the present where the idea of the
past itself can in t u r n be made e ~ t i n c t . ~For 'pataphysics,

any science sufficiently retarded in progress must seem

magical (but only after the fact), just as any science
sufficiently advanced in progress must seem magical (but
only before the fact)--and if 'pataphysics is itself
thaumaturgic, it is so, not because of any ironic nostalgia
for a prehistoric past, but only because of its oneiric

prognosis for an ahistoric future.

We see science itself

vanish before the zero-degree of its own anti-science.

Structured as a descriptive explication, which

emphasizes a theoretical perspective, this survey argues
that Jarry has provided an often neglected, but still

important, influence upon the poetic legacy of this century

(particularly the Italian Futurists, the French Oulipians,
and the Canadian "Pataphysicians )

Wbile my thes is focuses

upon theories of textual poetics rather than poetry itself

(relying upon the kind of Nietzschean sophistries that have
corne to characterize the work of such French rebels as
Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Serres, et al.), my thesis
does nevertheless strive to be as conceptually encyclopedic

as 'pataphysics itself:

instead of normalizing 'pataphysics

within one thecretical perspective, this s u r v e y alludes

intermittently to 'pataphysical enterprises that constitute
exceptions to such a genealogy of Jarryites.

Recounting the transition from 'pataphysics to

"pataphysics (from the single apostrophe of France to the

double apostrophe of Canada), this survey reflects the

influence of J a r r y upon my own poetic career (in particular:
my 'pataphysical encyclopedia, ~ r ~ s t a l l o a r a ~ h u )Inspired
.

by the etymology of the word "crystallography," such a work

represents an act of lucid writinq, which uses the language

of geological science to misread the poetics of rhetorical

language.

Such lucid writing is not concerned with the

transparent transmission of a message (so that, ironically,

the poetry is often "opaque");' instead, lucid writing is

simply concerned with the exploratory reflexivity of its o w n

pattern (in a manner reminiscent of lucid dreaminq).

The

capricious philosophg of 'pataphysics is itself an oneiric

science aware of its own status as a dream.

'Pataphysics reveals that science is not as "lucid" as

once thought, since science must often ignore the arbitrary,

if not whimsical, status of its own axioms.

Like the work

of some 'pataphysicians (particularly the Oulipians), who

make a spectacle of such epistemic formality by writing

texts according to an absurd, but strict, rule of machinic

artifice, this
nomic rigor

survey

also expresses its own extreme of

in this c a s e , grammatical parallelism ) :

each

sentence develops a chiastic symmetry as balanced as the

contrast in physics between meta and pata.

The a r b i t r a r y

character of such a constraint does not simply constitute a

stylistic frivolity, but strives 'pataphysically (if not
allegorically) to dramatize a scientific perversion:

that

the universe is itself an a r b i t r a r y formality, whose rules

have created a science that can in turn discuss such rules.

'Pataphysics valorizes the exception to each r u l e in

order to subvert the procrustean constraints of science.
While this survey may do little to change the mind of a

customary scientist (who must ignore the 'pataphysical

peculiarity of science itself in order to avoid the c h a r g e
of crackpot delusion), my survey may nevertheless convince

poets to qualify their own ludditic attitude toward science.

Such poets might recognize that, if poetry cannot oppose
science by becoming its antonyrnic extreme, perhaps poetry
can oppose science by becoming its hyperbolic extrerne, using
reason aqainst itself 'pataphysically in o r d e r to subvert
not only pedantic theories of noetic truth, but also
romantic theories of poetic g e n i u s .

Such poets might learn

to embrace the absurd nature of sophistic reasoning in order

to dispute the power of both the real and the true.

Vaneigem, however, warns us that, because of this

sophistry, "Joe Soap intellectuals, [']pataphysicians[ . . . f i bandwagon after bandwagon works out its own version of the
credo quia absurdum est:

you [do notJ believe in it, but

you do it anyway" (178) so that, as a result, " [ 'plata-

physics[ . . . ]leads us with many a twist and turn to the last

graveyards" (126).

While such charges of nihilistic

conformism do apply to the work of some 'pataphysicians

(particularly Sandomir and Shattuck), such misgivings do not
take into a c c o u n t that, like Nietzsche, Jarry does

radicalize philosophy, lampooning pedagogic authority, in

order to foment a spirit o f permanent rebellion, be it antibourgeois or anti-philistine.'

My thesis argues that this

apparent strategy of "indifference" in 'pataphysics merely

serves to satirize t h e impartiality of s c i e x e i t s e l f .

'Pataphysics refuses to conform to any academic

standard:

hence, this survey cannot demonstrate that it has

learned the lessons of its t o p i c without also negotiating a

virtually untenable ambiguity between the noetic mandate of
scholarship and the poetic license of 'pataphysics itself.
Since no literary history has ever traced in detail the
unorthodox genealogy of this avant-garde pseudo-science, 1
hope that my survey might in effect o f f e r a Wunderkammern o f

literary teratism, cataloguing the scientific exceptions to

the given n o m s of poetry in order to create an absurd

museum of " jurassic" machines.

J u s t as the anachronism of

an iron tool from before t h e Ice Age might d i s r u p t our sense

of temporal security, so a l s o might s u c h an a r c h i v e o f
anomaly r e c o n t e x t u a l i z e t h e g i v e n canon of modern p o e t r y .

Let u s imagine a f u t u r e f o r such an impossible philosophy.

xiii
Notes to Preface

l ~ e s c h l e robserves that , because the M ~ o t i s

lucifuaus is a hoax, while the Meaaloponera foetens is a
fact, "[tlhe Jurassic infects its visitor with doubts-little curlicues of misgiving--that proceed to infest
all[ . . . ]other dealings with the Culturally Sacrosanct" (40).

2 ~ h eJurassic Park of Crichton, for example,

dramatizes a 'pataphysical domain, in which a science of

operative risks (chaotic mathematics) indicts a science of
irnperative tasks (genetic engineering) for practising
"thintelligence' ( 2 8 4 ) - - a

clever truth with wanton power.

'~urassic technology demolishes the rnernory of the

museum so that the museum can no longer function properly as
a mausoleum for what has otherwise been forgotten:

there,

we do n o t remember what e x i s t s in the past so much as

remember that the past itself does not exist.

' ~ r ~ s t a l l o ~ r astrives
~hy
to achieve a state of

"birefrigence," offering two perspectives at the same time

from the focal point of a single lens, if not from the acute
angle of a poetic word:

in other words, lucid writing does

not transmit so much as diffract a given meaning.

xiv
'vaneigeln must admit t h a t , when active rather than
passive, such nihilism does evoke revolutionary sensi-

bilities:

"Nietzsche's[

...]i r o n y L . 1 ,

t h e s e are some of the impulses[

sciousness with[

. . . ]a

Jarry's Umour[

...]investing

...]--

human con-

true reversa1 of perspective" ( 177 ) .

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

iv

Preface

vi

xiv

Science and Poetry:

The Poetics o f the Ur in 'Pataphysics

Millenial 'Pataphysics:
The Poetics of an Imaginary Science

Italian Futurism:
A 'Pataphysics of Machinic Exception

French Oulipianism:
A 'Pataphysics of Mathetic Exception

Canadian " Pataphysics :

A 'Pataphysics of Mnemonic Exception

Texts Cited

1
Science and Poetrs:

The Differend of the Ur in 'Pata~hvsics

nNon cum vacaveris, ~atavhssicandum est."

(Jarry 1 9 6 5 : 3 9 )

"[TJhe encyclopaedia said:

For one of these

pnostics, the visible universe was aQ

i l l u s i o n or (more ~ r e c i s e l s )a sophism."
(Borges 1983: 8 )

"The debt that ['Ipataphysics owes to sophism

cannot be overstated."

(Bernstein 1 9 9 4 : 1 0 5 )

Quasi-Healities

Borges in T l h , U q b a r , Orbis Tertius imagines an

allegory about the seductions of s i m u l a t i o n .

A secret cabal

of rebel artists has conspired to replace the a c t u a l w o r l d ,

piece by piece, with a virtual world, so that the inertia of
a true history vanishes, phase by phase, into the amnesia of
a false memory.

The irony is that this conspiracy meets

with no resistance:

lq[a]lmost immediately, reality yielded

on more than one account" f o r "[tlhe t r u t h is that it longed

to yield" (1983:22)--to disappear into its own phantasms.

Al1 t h i n g s embrace t h e weirdness of this a s t o n i s h i n g e v e n t

and ignore the p i o u s n e s s of al1 admonishing truth.

event

The

foments a revolution in philosophy--a shift away from

the nomic study of what is veritable t o a ludic study of

what is possible, as i f " e v e r y philosophy is by definition a

dialectical game, a Philosophie des Als Ob" ( 1 4 ) .

Borges imagines a reality where to imagine a reality

can cause a reality t o e x i s t ex nihilo.

Each memory of an

object conjures the miracle of an h d n , the replica of a

replica; and yet, " [ s ]tranger and more pure than any h r h
is, at times, the

u"(an

ectype without prototype), "the

object produced through s u g g e s t i o n , educed by hope"

.'

(1983:18)

Like the t i h i s t a s who believe that

"metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature" ( 1 4 ) , the

narrator of this fantasy pretends to believe in such an

imaginary philosophy, quoting fictitious references to it i n

gazettes and treatises.
itself an

ur

His alternative to metaphysics is

because his dream of i t has i n d e e d corne true,

not only in his story but also in our world.

We too fulfill

this a p o c a l y p t i c conspiracy by creating, f o r ourselves, a

world where fantasy has more reality t h a n reality itself.

Postmodernism in fact defines itself in terms o f such a

catastrophe.

Philosophy has everywhere begun to threaten

the constraints of both the real and the true in o r d e r t o

practice an anti-philosophp-what

Jarry might call by the

name of '~ataahssics,the science of imaginary solutions and

arbitrary exceptions ( 1 9 6 5 : 1 9 2 ) .

Jarry suggests through

'pataphysics that reality does not exist, e x c e p t as the

interpretive projection of a phenomenal perspective-which
is to say that reality is never as it is, but is always
if it is.

Reality is quasi, pseudo:

es

it is more virtual

t h a n actual; it is real only to the degree to which i t can

seem to be real and only for so long as it can be made to

stay real.

Science for such a reality has increasingly

become what Vaihinger might call a "philosophy of as if"

(xvii), w i l f u l l y mistaking possibilities for veritabilities.

Baudrillard observes that, for the "[']Pataphysics

of

the year 2000," history has accelerated past the escape

velocity for reality, moving from the centrifuga1 gravity of
the real into the centripetal celerity of the void

(1994a:l).

Events occur in the nullspace of simulation,

where "[al11 metaphysical tension has been disaipated,

yielding- a 'pataphysical ambiancet' (1990:71 )

Things

succumb to relativity, complexity, and uncertainty, shifting

from a n absolute state of determinism to a dissolute field

of indeterminism.

The science of 'pataphysics responds to

these sbsurdities with a genre of science fiction that shows

science itself to be a fiction.

It nsrrates not what is,

but what m i a h t have become.

It i n h a b i t s t h e t e n s e of t h e

f u t u r e p e r f e c t , o f t h e post modo--a

paradoxical t e m p o r a l i t y ,

i n which what h a s yet to happen has already t a k e n place.

The U r o f S c i e n c e

Jarry c l a i m s t h a t ' p a t a p h y s i c s studies "the universe

supplementary to this one," b u t n o t s i m p l y an adjunct
reality s o much a s a n e r s a t z r e a l i t y , "a universe which can

bel . . . ]e n v i s a g e d i n the place o f t h e t r a d i t i o n a l one"

1965:131)

S u c h a supplement i s always more s u b s t i t u t i v e

t h a n augmentative, r e p l a c i n g r e a l i t y i n s t e a d o f accent i n g
r e a l i t y , a n d ironically t h e science t h a t studies auch a

supplement i s i t s e l f a supplement.

I t is " t h e science of

t h a t which is superinduced upon metaphysicsl' as b o t h an

e x c e s s and a r e d r e s s ,

" e x t e n d i n g as far beyond metaphysics

as the latter e x t e n d s beyond physics" ( 131 )

An auxiliary

substitute that compensates f o r a lack i n philosophy e v e n as

i t impregnates the form of philosophy, s u c h a science
simulates knowledge , p e r p e t r a t i n g a h o a x , r e a l l y and truly ,

b u t only t o r e v e a l t h e hoax o f b o t h t h e real a n d the t r u e .

Jarry performs humorously on behalf of l i t e r a t u r e what

N i e t z s c h e performs seriously on behalf of philosophy.

Both

t h i n k e r s in effect attempt to dream u p a gay s c i e n c e , whose

j o i e d e v i v r e thrives wherever the tyranny of truth has

increased our esteem for the lie and wherever the tyranny of
reason has increased our esteem for the mad.

Both thinkers

lay the groundwork f o r an anti-philosophy, whose spirit of

ref orm bas corne to characterize such alternatives to

metaphysics as the grammatology of Derrida, the

schizanalysis of Deleuze, or the homeorrhetics of Serres.

Al1 s u c h anti-metaphysical meta-philosophies argue that

anomalies extrinsic to a system remain secretly i n t r i n s i c to
such a system.

The most credible of truths always e v o l v e s

rom the most incredible of errors.

The praxis o f science

always i n v o l v e s the parspraxis o f p o e t r y .

'Pataphysics, " t h e s c i e n c e of the particular" (131),

does not, therefore, study the rules governing the general

recurrence o f a periodic incident ( t h e e x ~ e c t e dcase) so

much as study the garnes governing the special occurrence of

a sporadic accident (the excepted case).

'Pataphysics not

only studies exception, but has itself become an exception-d i s m i s s e d and neglected despite its influence and relevance

Jarry has not only inspired t h e a b s u r d i t y o f n e a r l y every

modern avant-garde, but has also p r e d i c t e d the absurdity o f

nearly al1 modern techno-science.

No history, however, has

ever traced in detail this unorthodox genealogy, even though

contemporary philosophy has begun to shift its emphasis from

trend that only

the metaphysical to the anti-metaphysical-a

a few critics (Dufresne, McCaffery, etc.) have dared to

d e s c r i b e as 'pataphysical in nature.

'Pataphysics b a s ultimately determined the horizon of

thought f o r any encounter between philosophy and literature,
but criticism has lasgely ignored this important principle
of the postmodern condition.

What irony:

'pataphysics has

replaced metaphysics so slowly and subtly that, once

noticed, the transition seems at once sudden and abrupt.

This

survey therefore intends to redress the surprise of

such smnesia by revising the history o f both science and

poetry i n o r d e r t o b r i n g 'pataphysics to bear upon

'pataphysics itself.

Such revision, of course, faces

obstacles, not the least of which is the fact that

'pataphysics is imaginary.

then is there to study?

No s u c h discipline exists.

What museums can house its r e l i e s ?

What codexes c a n record its axioms?

no more than an =--a

What

Such a science may be

l a s t hope that has yet to corne true.

'Pataphysics does not pretend t o unify its parts into a

system or to ratify its ploys into an agenda.

Such a cesual

science has no theory, no method ( e v e n though Jarry has

since i n s p i r e d writers t o c r e a t e t h e College o f
'Pataphysics, aspects of which allude to a fictional

archive, the Grand Academy of Lagado).

Such a casual

science also has no manual, no primer (even though Jarry has

since inspired critics to study the Elements of
'Pataphysics, excerpts of which appear in a f i c t i o n a l
almanac, the Exploits of Doctor Faustroll).

Like the

abridged treatise on T l b , the incomplete handbook of Jarry

compels its readers to finish the job of converting the fake
image of a virtual science into a real thing in the actual
universe.

Even t h i s survey may not explain t h e existence of

'pataphysics so much as conjure 'pataphysics i n t o existence.

Jarry implies that such a s c i e n c e c a n be written only

with an invisible i n k , "sulphate of quinine," whose words
remain unseen u n t i l read in the dark under the "infrared
rays of a spectrum whose other colors [are] locked in an

opaque b o x " ( 1 9 1 - 1 9 2 ) .

Such a science cannot be seen except

under a l i g h t t h a t cannot be seen in a place that cannot be

seen.

Such a science exists paradoxically in an eigenstate

o f indeterminate potentiality ( l i k e the cat of Schrodinger--

both there and n o t there at the same time).

Not philosophy,

but philosophastry, such a science at first appears

scandalous and superfluous because it delights in the
eclectic and the esoteric.

It encourages

a promiscuous

economy of indiscriminate exchanges, playfully conjugating

paradoxes in order to make possible an absolute expenditure

of thought without any absolute investiture in t h o u g h t .

'Pataphysics thus heralds apocalyptically what

Baudrillard c a l l s a "casual form of writing to match the

casual &&ementialitg

of our

ageW--a spiralling commentary

upon "the Grande Gidouille of History" (1994e:17).

This

survey attempts to practice such a writing of h i s t o r y in t h e

belief that theory must explore as much as it must explain.

T o do o t h e r w i s e is t o reduce t h e science of ' p a t a p h y s i c s to

another species of hermeneutics:

way to live.

just a way to resd, not a

To write against metaphysics, with its good

sense and its good taste, i s not to s h i r k the duties of the

c r i t i c , but to wager their values against the demand for

change.

If we are to take 'pataphysics seriously, are we

not obliged to be exceptional?

If this survey t h r e a t e n s to

meander, i s this not because it imitates the vortices of a

pidouille in order to maintain an element of s u r p r i s e ?

Surprise b r e a k s the promise o f the expected:

it is the

exception t h a t disturbs the suspense of what we know must

happen next.

Hence, this survey offers the following

itinerary about things to corne in the hope that we might

l a t e r be surprised by the unexpected.

This survey begins b y

tracing the h i s t o r y of t h e conflict between science and

poetry in order t o contextualize 'pataphysics within the

four phases of such dispute (the animatismic, the

mechanismic, the oraanismic, and the cvborganismicl.

The

survey then discusses 'pataphysics itself, defining three

declensions of exception (the anomalos, the s y z s a i a , and the
clinamen), in order to show the diverse parallels not only
between the work of Jarry and Nietzsche, but also to relate
such work to the diverse projects of such contemporary
philosophers as Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze, and Serres.

Subsequently, the s u r v e y traces the influence of Jarry

on three cases of avant-garde pseudo-science (the Italian
Futurists, the French Oulipians, and the Canadian
"Pataphysicians).

Each movement revises a prior schema

about the structure of exception in order to disrupt the

norrnalization of the 'pataphysical:

for the Futurists,

exception results from the collision of machines; for the

Oulipians, exception results from the constraint of
programs; and for the "Pataphysicians, exception results
from the corruption of mernories.

Like these movements, this

survey also tries to avoid the normalization of the

'pataphysical, doing so by alluding intermittently to
'pataphysical enterprises that do not refer to the tradition
of Jarry, but nevertheless represent some of the exceptions
to the genealogy that this survey posits.

10
Exceptions, after all, can resort to an assortment of
modalities:

variance (anomalos), alliance (sszvgia), or

deviance (clinamen).

The anomalos finds a way to d i f f e r

from e v e r y other thing in a system that values the norm of

equivalence; t h e s v z s a i a finds a way to e q u a t e t h i n g s to
each other in a system that values the norm of d i f f e r e n c e ;

and the clinamen finds a way to to detour around things in a

system that values t h e fate of contrivance.

Al1 three modes

of exception do inform t h i s s u r v e y on 'pataphysics so that,

if its style r i s k s everything to d i s r u p t , to confuse, and to
digress, it does so not for any lack of forma1 rigour, but
for the s a k e of a crucial thesis.

Can a ludic theory of

'pataphysics be fairly judged by the nomic values of

metaphysics if 'pataphysics criticizes metaphysics itself?
Are we not obliged to consider the problem of this question?

' Pataphysics ,

strangely enough, has two parallel

histories that act out opposite strategies for criticizing

s u c h a scientific metaphysics:

first, the irrationalism of

the Symbolists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists (al1 of

whom a r g u e for a poetic emancipation from science); second,

the surrationalism of the Futurists, the Oulipians, and the
"Pataphysicians (al1 of whom argue for a poetic
appropriation of science).

Jarry has influenced both

strategies despite their opposition.

The Futurists attack

the Symbolists, for example, just as the Oulipians attack

the Surrealists.

Both cases of conflict pit the pragmatic

formalism of postrnodernity against the aesthetic mysticism

of rnodernity.

What is at stake is the status of poetry in a

world of science.

truth?

How rnight poetry reclaim its own viable

Hou might science benefit from its own poetic irony?

Surrationalism, for example, responds to such questions

not only by using the forms of poetry to criticize the myths

of science (its pedantic theories of expressive truth), but

also b y using the forms of science to criticize the myths of

poetry (its romantic theories of expressive genius).
Surrationalism has accented this conflict between science

and poetry in three different ways.

The Futurists inflect

the machinic intensities of technological forms; the

Oulipians inflect the mathetic intensities of numerological
forms; and the "Pataphysicians inflect the mnemonic
intensities of palaeological forms.

This survey focuses

largely upon these three surrational movements not only

because -they have better expressed the original intentions
of 'pataphysics, but also because they have received less
critical attention from theoreticians.

Surrationalism is t h u s j u s t as exceptional as it is
'pataphysical, defining a regime for the avant-garde, not

only in poetry, but also in s c i e n c e .

Bachelard suggests

that al1 scientific radicalisrn begins with "an e ~ o c h e ,a

placing of reality between parentheses" (28) so that science

might systematically explore an otherwise impossible

hypothesis:

"it is in this area of dialectical

surrationalism that the scientific mind dreams" (32).

question about what if leads t o a science of as if.

Every

No

longer limited by one case of nature, science can propose

many modes of reason:

for example, the non-Euclidean

geometry of Riemann or the non-Boolean algebra of Korzybski.

We see science interrogate itself in order to relativize

itself.

It

can no longer t a k e its reality for g r a n t e d ,

must account for its history:

but

the reason of its reason.

Baudrillard suggests that, while metaphysics is the

anti of simulation (opposing fantasy with e v e r more

r e a l i t y ) , 'pataphysics i s the ante of simulation (opposing

fantasy with ever more fantasy) :

"only a

1' l ~ a t a ~ h v s i cof
s

simulacra c a n remove u s rom the[. ..lstrategy o f simulation

and the impasse of death i n which it imprisons us," and

"[t]his supreme ruse of the system[. . . ] , only a superior
ruse can stop" (1994b:153-154).

Metaphysics is a supreme

ruse because it makes us believe in t h e true; 'pataphysics

is a superior ruse because it lets us pretend to be untrue.

Truth implodes upon itself and reveals an aporia at its

13
centre--the

" [ d l e a d point[ . . . ]where every system c r o s s e s

this subtle limit of[ . , . ]contradiction [....]and enters live

into non-contradictionw--the ecstasy of thought:

"[hlere

begins a ['lpataphysics of systems" (1990:14).

The Ur of Historv

Beginnings:

with a swerve.

let us digress for a moment; let us begin

Ubu, the "Professor of ['lpataphysics,"

steps on stage at t h e t u r n o f t h e century in order to

announce "a branch of science which we have invented and for

which a crying need is generally experienced" ( 1 9 6 5 : 2 6 - 2 7 ) .

An imaginary science thus makes its debut in a millenary
instant, appearing at the transition from a romantic era to
a modernist era, when metaphysics has totalized, but not yet

optimized, its power to speak the truth.

If poetry has

failed to oppose science by being its antonymic extreme,

then perhaps poetry c m attempt to oppose science by being

i t s hyperbolic extreme.

A n absurd science t h a t might

dissect contradictions, has itself enacted contradictions.

It has simultaneously affirmed and negated, not only its
belief in, but also its doubts about, the values of reason.

Science has historically legitimated itself by

practicing a contemvtus historia.

Theories in the past that

d i f f e r from theories in the present must forfeit t h e i r

validity.

H i s t o r y becomes nothing more than what Canguilhem

might cal1 le ~ a s s d
d k ~ s s s d( 27 ) , a museum of error, where
time can cause any concept to becorne as quaint as a

metaphor . 2

Whenever science d e i g n s to think its h i s t o r y , it

narrates a transition from the falsity of poetry to the

verity o f science, even though history s e e s science, not as

the progress to truth, but as the congress of truth--a

quorum of dispute, where the right to speak the truth is
itself a t s t a k e .

The surrationalism o f 'pataphysics might

pursue this line of reasoning in order to suggest that in

fact science replaces its errors not w i t h other errata, but

with other errors, each one more subtle than t h e last one.

Science errs when it s e e s its history as a consecutive

process of both accumulation and amelioration.

When t r a c i n g

the history o f t h e term " p h y s i c a l , " from t h e d i s c o u r s e of

A r i s t o t l e (phsikos), through the discourse of Bacon

(phvsica), to the discourse of Heisenberg (phusics), science

often presumes not only that each discourse is the n a s c e n t

form o f t h e next discourse, but also that each discourse is

a variant form of the same discourse:
11

scientie.

The word

science," however, does not designate the coherent progress

of one rational practice, but instead signifies an unstable

array of logical tactics, whose local, synergistic conflict

can invoke, provoke, and revoke a global, syllogistic

deduction through dialectics (for Aristotle);

program:

jnduction through empiricism (for Bacon); and abduction

through statistics (for Heisenberg).

'Pataphysics reveals that, like poetry, science has an

avant-garde with its own history of dissent.

What Deleuze

and Guattari might cal1 the roval sciences of efficient

productivity have historically repressed and exploited the
nomad sciences of expedient adaptability ( 1987: 3 6 2 )
royal science is a standardized rnetaphysics:

it is deployed

by the state throughout a clathrate, Cartesian space,

putting truth to work on behalf of solid, instrumental
imperatives ( l a w and order).
bastardized metaphysics:

A nomad science is a

it is deployed against the state

throughout an aggregate, Riemannian space, putting truth &

risk on behalf of fluid, experimental operatives (trial and

error).

Such scientific economies are contrastive, but not

exclusive.

They transect at many points acrose many scales,

each o n e immanent in the o t h e r , like a postponed potential.

Royal sciences value the renovation of what Kuhn calls

a paradiam (1970:10), a nomic language-game that must
systematically (im)prove its own consistency and efficiency
by solving problems, yevokinfi anomsly for the sake of what

16

is normal and known.'

Nomad sciences, however, value the

1984:60),
innovation of what tyotard calls a p a r a l o ~( ~

ludic language-game that must systematically (ap)prove its

own inconsistency and inefficiency by convolving problems,
invokinq anomaly for the sake of what is abnormal and
unknown.

These two economies do not oppose each other so

much as enfold each other.

They inflect opposite values of

intent within a composite system of truth.

A failure in one

language-game played according to one set of rules always

determines the rules of success for a new language-game
played according to a new set of rules.

'Pataphysics no doubt d e f i n e s t h e rubric for this kind

of nomadic paralogy.

Itinerant and sophistic, a l 1 such

surrationalism reveals that science, like poetry, changes

only when it deploys what Shklovsky might cal1 a tactic of
ostranenie, of estrangement (12).

Scientific revolutions

may be nothing more than metaphoric revolutions, in which

autotelic novelties foreground the dramatization of a system

in order to undermine the autornatization of its reason.
Paradigm shifts reveal t h a t every axiology secretly involves
a reductio ad absurdum--the anomaly of an irresistible, but
inadmissible, theorem.

The aporia of such a system arises

paradoxically from the rigour of its logic--as if its

success also means its failure.

The sudden triumph of

' p a t a p h y s i c s t h u s does n o t imply t h e utter defeat of

m e t a p h y s i c s so much as the pyrrhic v i c t o r y of m e t a p h y s i c s .

Lyotard o b s e r v e s t h a t , because science creates a method

by w h i c h t o c o r r e c t t h e errors that it d e t e c t s i n its

m e t h o d , science is "a process of delegitimation f u e l e d by

the demand for legitimation itself" ( 1 9 8 4 : 3 9 ) .

Interdiction

by a paradigm a g a i n s t c o n t r a d i c t i o n i n the p a r a d i g m causes

the p a r a d i g m t o e x c l u d e , as e x t r i n s i c from i t , a paralogy

i n t r i n s i c t o it:

" science--by c o n c e r n i n g itself w i t h s u c h

t h i n g s as u n d e c i d a b 1 e s l . J - - i s

as[ . . . ] p a r a d o x i c a l " ( 6 0 ) .

theorizing i t s own evolution

Ironically, t h e system that

yearns t o v a l i d a t e i t s e l f , o n l y l e a r n s t o invalidate i t s e l f .
No l o n g e r d o e s science r a t i o n a l i z e i t s t r u t h so much as

relativize i t s t r u t h .

W e adopt " a model of l e g i t i m a t i o n

t h a t has nothing t o d o w i t h m a x i m i z e d p e r f o r m a n c e " ( 6 0 ) , but

r a t h e r implies "a m o d e l o f an 'open s y s t e m ,

' in

which a

statement becomes relevant if i t ' g e n e r a t e s ideas'"

(64).

S c i e n c e g r a p h s a r h i z o m a t i c f l o w c h a r t of stratif ied
t r a j e c t o r i e s , a n a g o n i s t i c forcef i e l d o f d i v e r s i f i e d
c a t a s t r o p h e s , some o f w h i c h c o l l i d e w i t h each other, some of

which c o l l u d e w i t h each other, al1 of which o p e r a t e together

s i m u l t a n e o u s l y i n fits and s t a r t s at asynchronous rates o f

incornmensurate change.

Science is a complex tissue o f

hybrid tensions, its metaphors not only reflectinq each

other, but also refracting each other.

They facilitate

changes to aa economy of exchanges by accentuating al1 the

unforeseen instabilities in scientific signification.

Like

poetry, science is a bricolage of figures, an assemblage of

devices, none of which fit together perfectly--but unlike

poetry, science must nevertheless subject its tropes to a

system, whose imperatives of both verity and reality

normally forbid any willing suspension o f disbelief.

Science and p o e t r y have s h a r e d a common history,

undergoing four phases of distinct change (the anirnatismic,
the mechanismic, the organismic, and the cyborganismic);

nevertheless, the two disciplines h a v e not evolved in tandem

or in s y n c h .

Foucault observes, for example, that science

and poetry have evolved opposite relations to the authorial

function (1977:125-126):

science moves toward anonymity;

poetry moves toward eponymity.

The absence of the author in

science serves a n allotelic interest (justifying itself for

the sake-of a finality outside of its own language), while

the presence of the author in poetry serves an autotelic
interest (justifying itself for the sake of a finality
inside of its own language).

Whenever science gains the

anonymous power to speak the t r u t h about things, poetry

seeks an eponymous refuge in the space of its own words.

Allotelic interests have always regarded autotelic

interests as a waste of time, particularly in a capitalist
economy where only the most effective arsenal of productive

tactics can prevail.

1s it any wonder then that, for such

imperial cynicism, science and poetry function within a

relation, not of g e n r e , but of power?

The waxing influence

of science has always implied the waning r e l e v a n c e of

poetry--as if science must capitalize upon the competition
for truth in order to monopolize the legitimation of truth.

The science of 'pataphysics, however, expresses on b e h a l f of

poetry what the metaphysics of science represses in itself:
its own basis in signs, their errors and biases--the
ideology of metaphor.

The autotelic aspect of science (its

ludic surrationalism) always threatens to radicalize the

allotelic agenda of science ( i t s nomic rationalism).

Althusser argues that, although ideology always

involves a denegation of itself so thst subjects produced by
it cannot recognize themselves within it, the allotelic
anonymity of science means that the clarity of its language

can nevertheless negate ideology, yet successfully remain

impartial:

"ideology has no outside (for itself), but at

the same tirne[ . . . ]it is nothina but outside (for science

[ .. . ] ) "

(175). Barthes disagrees, however, arguing that

science is n e v e r neutral.

Instead, science interpellates

its subject as an absence--a vanishing point, projected

within ideology as though beyond ideology:

"the s c h o l a r

excludes himself i n a concern for objectivity; yet what is

excluded i s never a n y t h i n g b u t the 'person'[...],

not the

subject; moreover, this subject is filled[..,]with

exclusion it[

...]imposes

the very

upon its person" (8).

Barthes suggests that science d i f f e r s from poetry, not

because of any disparity between them in format, content,

method, or intent, but becase of a d i s p a r i t y between them

in status-a prestige of pedagogy ( 3 )

Whereas p o e t r y h a s

always o f f e r e d an egalitarian regime, destabilizing the

s i g n i f i e r within a generalized economy of polysemic

enunciation, science has only offered a totalitarian regime,

stabilizing t h e s i ~ n i f i e dwithin a r e s t r i c t e d economy of
monosemic enunciation.

For Barthes, s c i e n c e must begin to

acknowledge i t s ideological investments, radicalizing i t s e l f

by poeticizing i t s e l f .

If ideology i s the unreal

conciliation of a r e a l contradiction, is it not fair to Say

that ideology is i t s e l f an imaginary solution--and therefore
'pataphysical?

I f metaphysics must study the ontology of

t r u t h , must not 'pataphysics study t h e i d e o l o g y of power?

Ultimately, the conflict between science and poetry

concerns this power to speak t h e truth, and this power has

undergone four phases of epistemic transition:

the

animatismic phase, whose truth involves interpreting signs

through an a c t of exegesis; the mechanismic phase, whose
truth involves disquisiting signs through an e c t of
mathesis; the oraanismic phase, whose truth involves
implementing signs through an act of anamnesis; and the
cvbornanismic phase, whose truth involves deregulating signs

through an act of catamnesis.

The life sciences, for

example, have progressed from the biomaav of animatism,

through the biotaxu of mechanism, through the b i o l o ~ vof

organism, to the bionics of cyborganism.

Each phase

involves not only a different definition of science and

poetry, but also a different opposition between t h e m .

During the animatismic phase, when papal academies

divide discourse scholastically into modes o f textualization
and numeralization (trivium and suadrivium), knowledge is
rarefied largely b e c a u s e of its insufficient supply.

During

the mechanismic phase, when royal academies divide discourse

aristocratically into modes of investigation and
dissemination, knowledge is rarefied largely because of its
unspecialized market.

During the organismic phase, when

state academies divide discourse democratically into modes

of ratiocination and acculturation (scientia and humanitas),
knowledge is rarefied because of its specialized labour.

22

And during the cyborganismic phase, when state academies

divide discourse plutocratically into modes of totalization
and optimization, knowledge is r a r e f i e d largely because o f
its overabundant supply*

The Animatismic Phase

Foucault observes that , bef ore empiricism, "divinatio

and eruditio are both part of the same hermeneutics"

(1973:34). Medieval trestises on natural history establish

no criterion for the condition of relevance, s i n c e such

treatises merely compile leaenda, collecting together

haphazardly al1 the randorn lore about a sample topic in

order to document the complex heraldry of its t e x t u a l
spectrum:

"none of these forms of discourse is required to

justify its d a i m to be e x p r e s s i n g a truth before it is

interpreted; a l 1 that is required of it is the possibility
of talking about it" (40).
sees

Science in its snimstismic phase

that signs e x i s t long b e f o r e being known:

they are

written-into things by nature, and they extinguish the

distance between things in order to reveal the synchronie

continuum of their secret order.

Reality for the animatismic phase is a stable orrery

t h a t r e v o l v e s around a central fulcrum.

Knowing such a

reality involves an exegetic function, reading signs,

interpreting them, rearranging them within an anagram that
permutes al1 their modes of sympathy and antipathy.

Such an

anatomy o f forms distributes signs aesthetically throughout

a nomad regime in which a l 1 things must conform to an o r d e r

of both resemblance and concordance.

Even the difference

between the reasoning of s c i e n c e and t h e imagining o f poetry

does not yet exist because no paradigm provides a consensus
for s u c h verities.

Each text has equal truthfulness.

Each

m y t h can convey what Vico might cal1 a "poetic wisdom"

(110), whose truth owes its power t o an error that demands

belief in a "credible impossibilityt' (120)--an as if that
can provide the premise in the f u t u r e for a nuovo scienza. 4

Poetic wisdom simply monopolizes the totality of both

the subject and the o b j e c t , leaving no space f o r modern
science to speak the truth for itself except as an act of
deviance within such a norm.

Poetic wisdom cannot recognize

any disparity between the subjective affect of imagining and

the objective effect of reasoning.

Alchemy, for example

r e s o r t s t o such poetic wisdom in order to imagine a lapis

philoso~horum that can produce a coniuntia o ~ ~ o s i t o r u m ,

harmonizing the disputes among al1 s u c h elements.

Truth

becomes a r i t u a l of scenes in which al1 things can change

their images into each other.

The transitive category for

24

l e a d becoming gold transmutes i n t o a r e d e m p t i v e allegory

about body becoming soul.

The lapis ~ h i l o s o ~ h o r u m
is a

t h i n g unlike any o t h e r , b u t i t makes t h i n g s so that they are

l i k e everything else.

Tt is the metaphor for a l 1 metaphor.

Donne practices the poetic wisdom o f s u c h a s c e n i c

ritual when he d e l i b e r a t e l y misunderstands t h e difference

between the s c i e n c e of alchemy and his p o e t r y of c o n c e i t s ,
i n v i t i n g h i s reader, " A s f i r e these drossie Rymes t o
p u r i f i e , / O r as E l i x i r , t o change them t o g o l d " since such a

r e a d e r is "that A l c h i m i s t which alwaies had/ W i t , whose one

spark could make good t h i n g s of bad" ( 2 9 4 ) .

Alchemy becomes

a metaphor that can undergo a p r o c e s s o f alchemy itself.

The device o f t h e conceit r e f l e c t s an alchernical rnarriage o f

antongrnical extremes so t h a t , f o r example, the i d e a of love

can be equated w i t h any m o t i f , no matter how absurd, b e i t a

drafting compass or a drinking i n s e c t .

The lapis of

alchemy, like the lexis of p o e t r y , reveals t h a t t h e figura1

i s merely the alembic for t h e l i t e r a l .

The n o b l e metal of

truth a r l s e s from t h e ignoble filth of e r r o r . 5

Vico claims that just as modern science shows t h a t "man

becomes al1 things by understanding (homo intelliaendo fit

o r n n i a ) , " so a l s o does p o e t i c wisdom show tbat "man becomes

al1 t h i n g s by n o t understanding[...)(bomo

non intelliaendo

25
fit omnia)" (130).

To understand on behalf of truth is to

be reactive, accepting the world of the as is, but to

misunderstand on behalf of error is to be creative,

inventing the world of the as if.

To be an alchemist is to

practice an aesthetic that acts as a lapis ~ h i l o s o ~ h o r u m ,

transmuting the errors of alchemy ( a nomad science) into the

truths of chemistry ( a royal science), but ironically, this

change requires that science and poetry shift from an order
where they are unified to an order where they are divided.

A literal stone that philosophers must diligently seek

embodies a figura1 power that they must eventually deny.

Foucault argues that, during such a transition, the

"tautological world of resemblance n o w finds itself
dissociated and, as it were, split down the middle"

(1973:58).

For Donne, s u c h a dissociation of sensibility

implies the failure of alchemy to reconcile the imminent

conflict between the subjective affect of imagining and the
objective effect of reasoning:

"new philosophy cals a l 1 in

doubt" so that "The Sun is lost, and th'earth,

and no man's

wit/ Can well direct him, where to looke for it" (335).

The old, geocentric order of elemental synthesis regards the

conceit as the integrel epitome of al1 similes, but the new,
heliocentric order of empirical analysis regards the conceit
as the marginal extreme of al1 follies.'

N o t until the

a d v e n t of 'pataphysics does t h e conceit, the s y n t h e s i s of

opposites, regain its status as a device of poetic wisdom.

The Mechanismic Phase

Bacon observes that , before empiricism, "systems are

but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own

creation after an unreal and scenic fashion" ( 1 9 6 0 : 4 9 ) .

Natural history must revoke these "Idols of the ~ h e a t e r "

( 4 9 ) , replacing the theatrical world of scenes (the as if)

with the empirical world of senses (the as is), but this

change risks an aporia since this new mode of investigation
only ratifies a new mode of dramatization--the petit r & i t

of an experiment in which an event must restage itself again

and again under the auspice of control.

Epistemic errors

are now s i m p l y traced to linguistic abuses.

Science in its

mechanismic phase s e e s t h a t signs e x i s t only by being known:

they are written ont0 things by culture, and t h e y

distinguish the distance between t h i n g s i n order to i n v e n t
the synchronie continuum of their proper order.

Reality for the mechanismic phase is a stable clock

t h a t o p e r a t e s within a static regimen.

Knowing such a

r e a l i t y involves a mathetic function, testing signs,

disquisiting them, regimenting them within a diagram that

27
d i s p l a y s a l 1 t h e i r modes o f i d e n t i t y a n d a l t e r i t y .

Such a

taxonomy o f forms d i s t r i b u t e s signs i n c r e m e n t a l l y throughout

a royal regime in which al1 t h i n g s m u s t depend upon a n o r d e r

o f both equivalence and d i f f e r e n c e .

The evidence o f

s c i e n c e , not the e m i n e n c e of p o e t r y , p r o v i d e s a consensus

for t h e v e r i t i e s of a p a r a d i g m .
t r u t h f u l n e s s at stake.
sources.

A l 1 t e x t s have their

Al1 t e x t s m u s t legitimate their

The t r u t h o f science fulfills such a r e q u i s i t e b y

favourably gauging i t s power over the object a g a i n s t t h e

d i v i n e power of n a t u r e .

The t r u t h o f science t h u s aligns

i t s cause, i t s a r c h e , w i t h t h e power of a noumenal origin.

Modern science s i m p l y c o l o n i z e s the a l t e r i t y of t h e

o b j e c t , l e a v i n g n o space f o r poetic wisdom t o speak t h e
t r u t h a b o u t nature except through an act of alliance with
s u c h a norm.

Poetic wisdom must adopt t h e v a l u e s o f modern

s c i e n c e i n o r d e r t o s t a t e a n y objective v e r i t i e s .
for example, argues t h a t , poet i c a l l y
w d l e x p r e s ' d or a m p l i f y ' d ,

Sprat,

" T r u t h 1s n e v e r so

as by those Ornaments which are

Truie1 and Real i n t h e m s e l v e s " ( 4 1 4 ) .

Truth is t h e b e s t

ornament because i t has t h e least ornament--which is t o say

t h a t s c i e n c e i s the best poetry because i t has t h e least
poetry.

The i r o n y here i s t h a t verse must l e a r n i t s r u l e s

of metaphor from a genre t h a t r u l e s out metaphor.

The sage

o f s c i e n c e a c t u a l l y becomes the muse of poetry (hence t h e

numerous elegies to scientists, particularly N e w t o n , despite

the fact that science follows a principle of antipoeisis).

Newton berates poetry for its "ingenius nonsense" (Bush

40) even though Glover portrays him as the paragon of

poetry:

"O might'st

thou, ORPHEUS, now again revive,/ And

NEWTON should inform thy list'ning ear" ([Pemberton 231).

Poetry indulges in scientific sycophancy, largely because
the gravity of force in the P r i n c i ~ i alends itself to the
idea of a poetic sublime just as the levity of light in t h e

Opticks lends itself to the idea of a poetic beauty. 8

Glover writes that "Newton demands the muse" ( [ 1 4 ] ) , but
soon Thomson w o n d e r s :

"How shall the Muse, then, grasp the

mighty theme," particularly "when but a f e w / Of the deepstudying race can stretch their minds/ To w h a t he knew"
(1853:337).

Science has unveiled so many universal

mysteries that, ironically, it threatens to become a poetry

of truth more sublime than the t r u t h of poetry itself.

Poetry makes an effort to dispute this omniscience of

science (its will to power), as Swift does, for example, but
poetry cannot dispute the conscience of science (its will to
truth).

While science ascends t o a state of greater

complexity, becoming more abstract, theoretic, and

autocratic, poetry descends through science to a state of

29

greater simplicity, becoming more concrete, pragmatic, and

democratic.

To keep Pace with science, poetry must shift

its f o c u s from the sublime in the natural physics of Newton

to the poetic beauty in the natural history of Linnaeus.

As Aikin avers, the updated images of natural history must
replace the outdated tropes of poetry since " n o t h i n g can be

really beautiful which has not truth for its basis" (25).
To fulfill a didactic mandate, poetry must l e a r n its truth
directly from the mineral, the v e g e t a l , and the bestial. 9

Darwin, the p o e t i c savant, follows such advice to t h e

letter when h e explains the botanical taxonomy of Linnaeus
b y equating modes of floral procreation with modes of s o c i a l

flirtation:

" t h e general design[

...]is

to i n l i s t

Imagination under t h e banner of Science; and to l e a d her

votaries from t h e l o o s e r analogies, which dress[ . . . ] p oetry,

to the stricter ones, which form[

. . . lphilosophy"

Poetic pleasure submits to noetic pedagogy.

1791 :v)

The catalogue

of flowers, the antholonv, so to speak, is merely the

flowery ornament for the summary document of its scientific

marginalia.

The poetry a c t s as a mere note for the notes

themselves--a pretense to plant the seeds of interest so

that the reader might in turn disseminate this information.

The poetry literally is a botanic garden, in which

germinates the romantic metaphor that poetry is organic.

The Oraanismic Phase

Coleridge observes that, after empiricism, the botanic

mode1 of science does inform a poetry of organic unity, but
contrary to Darwin, t h i s poetic pleasure does not submit to
noetic pedagogy:

"[a] poem[ . . . ]is opposed t o f ...]science,

by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth"

(164).

Wordsworth qualifies this statement by arguing that

"the knowledge of both the Poet and the Man of science is

pleasure" ( 4 5 6 ) , but w h i l e poetry i s an e c s t a t i c search for
an i n t i m a t e truth, science i s a monastic search for an

ultimate truth--one whose discourse values an empiricism of

the senses at the expense of their sensualism.

Science in

its organismic phase s e e s that signs evolve by being known:

they are w r i t t e n across events b y culture, and they

distinguish the interval between events in order to direct

the diachronic continuum of their normal order.

Reality for the organismic phase is a simple engine

that generates a stable dynarnic.

Knowing such a reality

involves an anemnestic function, working signs, implementing

them, redeploying them within a program that d i s p l a y s al1

their modes of function and relation.

Such an economy of

forms distributes its signs pragmatically thoughout a royal

regime in which a l 1 things must depend upon an order of b o t h

31

productivity and applicability.

Not only the evidence of

science, but also the progress of science, provides a

consensus for the verities of a paradigm.
their usefulness at stake.
intents.

Al1 texts have

A l 1 texts must legitimate their

The truth of science fuifills such a requisite by

favourably gauging i L s power over the subject against the

humane power of culture.

The truth of science t h u s aligns

its effect, its telos, with the power of a noumenal motive.

Modern science simply colonizes the identity of the

subject, leaving no space for poetic wisdom to speak the
truth about culture except through an act of defiance
against such a norm.

Poetic wisdom must evict the values of

modern science in order to state any subjective verities.

Hence, Keats condemns Newton for the "cold philosophy" that

must "Conquer a l 1 mysteries by rule and line" (226) just as

Blake condemns Newton for the "Reasonings like vast

Serpents" that must hang their "iron scourges over Albion"

(16).

Such reasoning that allegedly discredits imagining

only creates an undead truth, an Ur-Frankenstein that, for

Wordsworth, must await a poetic rebirth:

"the Poet will

lend his divine spirit to aid in the transfiguration" when

"science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put
on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood" ( 4 5 6 ) .Io

32
Wordsworth claims t h a t " [ t l h e r e m o t e s t discoveries o f
t h e C h e m i s t , t h e B o t a n i s t , o r M i n e r a l o g i s t , will be as
p r o p e r o b j e c t s o f t h e ~ o e t ' sart[.

..] i f

the t i m e should ever

corne when t h e s e things s h a l l be f a m i l i a s to us" ( 4 5 6 ) ,

but

in t h e meantime, this differend has no t e r m s f o r c o n s e n s u s .

Poetry i n d u l g e s i n s c i e n t i f i c c o n t r o v e r s y , largely because

the schisrn b e t w e e n r e a s o n i n g and i m a g i n i n g has b e g u n t o

reflect t h e a n o m i e of p o e t i c labour.

For Huxley, s u c h

l a b o u r c a n n o t compete w i t h t h e c a p i t a l v a l u e s o f u t i l i t y
(1948:49)--thus

p o e t r y must warrant a Benthamite r e j e c t i o n - -

but for Arnold, such labour d o e s reflect upon t h e communal

values o f l i b e r t y (1889:llZ)--which is to s a y , the reasoning
of s c i e n c e can t e a c h w h a t i s real and t r u e , but o n l y t h e

i m a g i n i n g o f poetry can t e a c h what i s f i n e and j u s t .

Schlegel writes t h a t p o e t r y must redeem science in the

b e l i e f that "al1 art s h o u l d become science and a l 1 science

art" ( 1 5 7 ) .

Poetry must become a genre of therapeutic

k n o w l e d g e , c r e a t i n g pseudo-statements t h a t c a n , according t o

Richards, d e t a c h the u n t r u t h of poetry from belief and yet

retain the b e a u t y of such untruth in order to r e f i n e belief
itself (61).

Newtonian cosmology has discredited the p o e t i c

o b j e c t just as Darwinian e v o l u t i o n has discredited t h e

p o e t i c s u b ject ; t h e r e f o r e , poetry must henceforth resort to

the as if of an imaginary solution in order to speak i t s own

truth.

Poetry must ascend through science to a state o f

greater complexity, becoming more abstract, theoretic, and

autocratie.

Poetry must transform its scientific

radicalism, shifting its critique from an opposition

(external to science) to a subversion (interna1 to science).

'Pataphysics thus arises j u s t before modernism begins

to wring i t s hands about the enigma o f what Snow calls "the

Two Cultures" ( 2 ) .

Huxley argues that, despite their

dispute, the two cultures resemble each other most when the
noetic clarity of reasoning and the poetic opacity o f
imagining approach t h e sublimity of the ineffable (1963:14).

What is sublime in t h e pseudo of poetry can, according to

Richards, return reasoning and irnagining to an equilibrium

t h a t resembles t h e tension o f forces in a cloud of magnets

(15-18) .ll

Such an equation of antonyms revives the conceit

as a sublime device not of alchernical marriage, but of

scientific synthesis; hence, Eliot can equate poetry with a

platinum catalyst that f u s e s oxygen and sulphur w i t h o u t

changing-itself: " [ i l t is in this depersonalization that

art may be said to approach the condition of science" (7).12

The C s b o r ~ a n i s m i c P h a s e

B a r t h e s o b s e r v e s that, after modernism, science can no

34

longer stabilize its object within an allotelic economy of

monosemic reference, but must, like poetry, criticize its
method within an autotelic economy of polysemic existence:
"science s p e e k s itself; literature writes itself[...]:

it

is not the same body, and hence the same desire, which is
behind the one and the other" (5); nevertheless, "science
will becorne literature, insofar as literature [

...] is

alreadyr. ..]sciencew (IO), only when science can see that

its own truth exists not outside of language, but only
because of language.

Science in its cyborganismic phase

s e e s that signs evolve beyond being known:

they are written

as events by culture, and they extinguish the interval

between events in order to create the synchronic

discontinuum of their random order,

Reality for the cyborganismic phase is a complex matrix

that cornputes a mobile dynamic.

Knowing such a reality

involves a catamnestic function, playing signs,

deregulating them, recombining them within a hologram that
displays-al1 their modes of seduction and simulation.

Such

a synonymy of forms distributes its signs excrementally

throughout a nomad regime in which al1 things must depend

upon an order of virtuosity and virtuality.
their artfulness at stake.

Al1 texts have

Al1 texts must legitimate not

only their reasons (be they in the origin or in the result),

35
but the reason for these reasons.

The truth of science can

no longer fulfill s u c h a r e q u i s i t e by favourably gauging its

power against t h e metaphysics o f e i t h e r an arche or a telos,

but only against the 'pataphysics of an exceptional

phenornenon-be

it an aporia, a c h i s s m , or a s w e r v e *

Modern science simply mono.polizes the totality of both

the subject and the object, l e a v i n g no space for poetic

wisdom t o speak t h e t r u t h for i t s e l f except as an act of

deviance within s u c h a norm.

Modern s c i e n c e can no longer

stabilize the disparity between the subjective affect of

imagining and the objective effect of r e a s o n i n g .

The advent

of 'patsphysics signals the f i r s t attempts to subvert this

agenda from within its own limits.

The science of

'pataphysics inspires a literary tradition that has i n t u r n

begun t o regard i t s e l f as s response to science with an

outcome to be studied by a science, be it formalist,

structural, semiologic , or c y b e r n e t i c l3

The ' pataphysical

fundamentsls of surrationalism have in t u r n provided the

aesthetic parallel for the dialectic sophistry of almost al1
anti-metaphysical meta-philosophies.

Baudrillard s u g g e s t s that, "a century after J a r r y , but

in a cool universe w i t h o u t irony, and without 'pataphysical

acid," science has so inflated the fund of information that

36
the excesses of such metastasis evoke the flidouille o f Ubu:

"['p]ataphysics

or metaphysics, this pregnancyr

the strangest signs[

...]of

...]is

one of

this spectral environment where

each ce11 ( e a c h function, e a c h structure), is left with the

possibility, as in cancer, [...]of

(1990:28).

multiplying indefinitely"

Science is a tautological extravagance, for

which Ubu, "a figure of genius, r e p l e t e with that which has

absorbed everything, transgressed everything,

[...Iradiates

in t h e void like an imaginary solution" (71).

Science now

f u n c t i o n s i n what Jarry might cal1 an economy of phvnance

(1969:43), expending w i t h o u t investing, producing pschitt or

merdre--an

ironic eponym f o r "excess" w i t h an e x c e s s l e t t e r .

Baudrillard suggests that, f o r s u c h an economy o f

science, the threat of the u n r e a l h a u n t s every system o f

verity s i n c e t h e methods of physics can no longer confirm

whether or not reality itself is a fsntasy:

"[sJuch would

be the [']pataphysics[ . . . ]that lies i n w a i t for al1 physics

at its inadmissible limitstt (1990:85). Has not physics
already started to resemble a s c i e n c e o f imaginary
solutions, what with its particle zoo of new paradoxes (the
amphibolies of psrticles, the metaleptics of causality)?
we not see a h i n t of 'pataphysics in the strsngeness

gf

anti-matter, black-holes, and time-travel (the theories o f

which have already fomented philosophical apprehensions

Do

37
about the existence of existence itself)?

In the face of

such scientific absurdities, poetry has responded by

portraying itsel f as a literalized experiment

Prigogine and Stengers observe that, for such an

episteme, "science occupies a peculiar position, that of a
poetical interrogation of nature, in the etymological sense
that t h e poet is a 'makerY--active," inventing the world
post facto while observing the world a priori (301).

Science has finally achieved the hyperbole of its own

"death," so t o speak, disappearing into a condition of
tautologic metalepsis, paradoxically becoming b o t h the cause

and effect of its own virtual reality.

Science has begun to

fulfill the simulacral precession that, for Baudrillard,

defines the 'pataphysics of a postmodern philosophy.

As

Genosko suggests, "[i]t is surely a ['Jpataphysical accident

that death is for Baudrillard the very[.

..]gesture

which

pushes the tautologies of the system over the edge, with a

b e l l y laugh of symbolic proportions"

( 116).

Pseudo-Sciences

Feyerabend a r g u e s t h a t , f o r science t o progress, the

nomic t r u t h of the as is must induce a n escape to the ludic

space of an as i f :

" w e need a dream-world

in order to

discover t h e f eatures of the real world[

...Iwhich may

actually be just another dream-world" (32).

Science in such

a Traumwelt adopts n o t the terrorism of unified theories,

but the anarchism of ramified theories--"[t]he only

principle t h a t does not inhibit progress is:

(23).

ansthina noes"

Such a principle does not encode a laissez-faire

economy (whose Darwinian cornpetition requires that a royal

science discard the truth of a defunct concept as either
extinct or deviant); instead, such a principle tries to
entice a savoir-faire economy (whose Lucretian arbitration
requires that a nomad science bracket the truth of a defunct
concept as either dormant or defiant),15

'Pataphysics dramatizes this principle of Feyerabend by

arguing t h a t , however obsolete or indiscrete any theory
might at first appesr, every theory has the potential to
improve knowledge in s a m e way.

J u s t as biodiversity can

make an ecology more adaptable, so also can dilettantism

make an episteme more versatile.

The process of science

muet lea-rn to place its defunct concepts into a kind of

suspended animation that preserves them for the millenary

reverie of an imaginary science.

The truth diverges

throughout many truths, inducing the sophisms of dissent,

novelty, and paradox:

" g i v e n any rule(...]for

science,

there are always circumstances when it is advisable not o n l y

39
to ignore t h e r u l e , but to adopt its opposite" ( 2 3 ) in order
"to make the weaker case the stronnerl...land

t h e r e b v to

sustain t h e motion of the whole" (30).

'Pataphysics thus behaves as if it is a Philosophie des

Als Ob.

Vaihinger observes that the phrase "as if"

constitutes a "comparative apperception" (91), juxtaposing

two concepts somewhere in t h e interzone between the
virtuality of a figura1 relation and the a c t u a l i t y of a
literal equation.

Neither rhetorical nor theoretical, the

as if constitutes a paradox of contingency, since reference

is made to an impossibility, but from t h i s impossibility an

inference is made:

"reality[

...]is

c o m ~ a r e dwith something

whose[. ..]unreality is at the same time admitted" (98). The

as if posits the possible consequences of an impossible

inconsequence.

The as if i s simply the irnaginary solution

tu t h e question what i f .

1s not this question a deliberate

misreading that shows the real and the true to be quasi and
pseudo--free, that is, to be something e l s e ?

'Pataphysics s u g g e s t s that metaphysics forgets that

this operative conditional (as i f ) is not an imperative
conditional ( i f t h e n ) ; nevertheless, the l a t t e r relation
always resides unheard between the two words of the former
relation.

The if t h e n revokes t h e suspension of disbelief

40

in the as if so t h a t the event must be treated as it would

be treated i f i t were as i s .

The slightness of t h i s

difference between the as i f and the if t h e n thus marks t h e

slightness of the difference between t r u t h and power.

The

science of 'pataphysics explores t h e s e conditionals i n order

to see what might happen if science is treated as poetry and
vice versa, the philosopher studying the exceptional ( b e i t

t h e anomalos, t h e s u z ~ ~ i aor
, t h e clinameq) i n order to make
t h e weaker c a s e , t h e stronger--almost

as i f to s a y t h a t

ultimately such a case might be as true as ang

from Tlon.

Notes to Chanter 1

is o f course a n i r o n i c signifier w i t h two

meanings that c o n t r a d i c t each other.

Its real usage as a n

a d j e c t i v e i n German refers t o a n o r i g i n a r y mode1 f o r

i m a g i n a r y c o p i e s , b u t its u n r e a l usage as a s u b s t a n t i v e i n

T l h e s e r e f e r s to imaginary copies wi t h o u t any originary

model.

The

ur t h u s embodies

a paradox o f s i m u l a t i o n , whose

s t r u c t u r e i m p l i e s t h a t , a t t h e origin, n o o r i g i n e x i s t s , but
t h e dream of an o r i g i n .

No longer does t h e c a u s a l vector

from t h e r e a l t o i t s copy make sense s i n c e the fantasy o f

t h e u_r d o e s not r e p l i c a t e , so much as o r i g i n a t e , r e a l i t y .

' ~ a n ~ u i l h e r observes
n
t h e t " t h e history of s c i e n c e

i s t h e h i s t o r y of a n abject[. ..]that
has a
-

is

a h i s t o r y and [that]

h i s t o r y , w h e r e a s s c i e n c e i s the s c i e n c e of a n o b j e c t

t h a t is n o t a history [ a n d ] t h a t h a s

history" (25-26).

Science ignores i t s history because s c i e n c e i n its history

i s no longer s c i e n c e *

F o r s c i e n c e , t r u t h is p r e s c i e n t ,

always t-here b e f o r e t h e fact of its revelation; for h i s t o r y ,

t r u t h i s expedient, only there a f t e r the fact of i t s

production.

T h e h i s t o r y of t r u t h shows t h a t a persistent

c o n c e p t does n o t n e c e s s a r i l y imply i t s c o n s i s t e n t meaning.

42

' ~ u h n writes that "a p a r a d i g i is a criterion for

choosing problems that, while the paradigm is t a k e n for
granted, can be assumed to have solutions" (1970:37).
a Weltanschauung with three discursive functions:

It is

first, it

ratifies interdictions in order to define what it makes

perceivable and thereby improve its accuracy; second, it
verifies predictions in order to align the perceivable with
the conceivable and thereby improve its efficacy; and third,

it pacifies contradictions in order to define what it makes

conceivable and thereby improve its adequacy.

'~uovo scienza is a poetic wisdom that might

study poetic wisdom (and t h u s such a science almost appears

to preempt 'pataphysics itself).

Vico, like Jarry, believes

that, because nature is an inhuman creation, we can never

know its truth; but unlike Jarry, Vico believes that,
b e c a u s e culture is a human creation, we can know its truth.

Jarry argues that al1 truth, be it natural or cultural, is

still an opaque mirage, never to be known.

Every science,

for him; is a poetic wisdom if only because it rnust commit

at leest one error--the error of belief in truth itself,

onne ne

s u g g e s t s t h a t a l 1 "this worlds genrall

sicknesse" ( 336) might paradoxicslly cleanse impurity itsel f

and thus "purifie/ A l l , by a true religious Alchimy" (334).

Metaphysics involves a christological transmutation that
purifies a supernal truth of al1 its errors; however,
'pataphysics involves an anti-christological transmutation

that purifies an infernal error of al1 its truth (as if

t r u t h itself is the filth)-ohence, Ubu in the heraldic

allegory of Caesar Antichrist performs a reverse alchemy, in

which to rise above sin i s to fa11 from grace.

'~allyn observes t h a t , f o r Copernicus and Kepler,

" t h e world is the work of a divine poietes," and "what they
aim to reveal through their own poetics is t h u s
truly[

...]t h e

poetic structure of the world" (20).

Donne

feels snxiety about such a p o e t i c cosmos even though its

s y s t e m is more

aesthetic than empirical, not verified and

rectified so much as symmetrized and harmonized.

The

problem is that such a view radically displaces humanity,

propelling us into a regressive infinitude, a sublime
extreme without limit, be it atomic or cosmic in scale.

44

'~homson eulogizes Newton:

"The heavens are al1

hi6 own; from the w i l d rule/ O f whirling v o r t i c e s and

circling s ~ h e r e s , /To t h e i r first great simplicity
r e s t o r e d , " and "Even L i g h t i t s e l f [ . . . ] / Shone undiscover'd,

t i l l his brighter rnind/ U n t w i s t e d al1 the s h i n i n g robe of

day" (1853:336).

Akenside, likewise, eulogizes Newton:

"The lamp of science t h r o u g h the jealous maze/ Of N a t u r e

g u i d e s , when haply you reveal/ Her secret honours:

[...)/

The beauteous l a w s of l i g h t , t h e central powers/ That wheel

the pensile p l a n e t s round t h e year" ( 1825: 51-52 )

orce ce

and light a c q u i r e aesthetic currency i n an

industry that must versify t h e theory by Newton i n o r d e r t o

d e i f y the memory o f N e w t o n .

F o r poets influenced by the

The

sublime of the P r i n c i ~ i a ,see William Powell Jones:

R h e t o r i c of Science:

A Studs o f Scientific I d e a s and

Irna~ery in Ei~hteenth-Centurv Enalish P o e t r v (Berkeley:

U n i v e r s i t y o f California, 1 9 6 6 ) .

For poets i n f l u e n c e d by

the beauty of the Opticks, see Marjorie Nicholson:

Pemands -the Muse:

Newton's

Centurs Poets (Hamden:

Newton

'Opticks' and the E i ~ h t e e n t h

Archon, 1 9 4 6 ) .

45

' ~ i k i np o s i t s a didact ic hierarchy a s c e n d i n g f rom

t h e m i n e r a l t o the animal, so t h a t zoology l e n d s i t s e l f best

t o p o e t r y , l a r g e l y because b e a s t s most closely resemble

humans and thus p r o v i d e a larges repertoire of p e d a g o g i c a l

similes ( 3 4 ) .

A i k i n thus contradicts himself:

he argues

t h a t poetry must use s c i e n c e t o reject t h e past o f culture

a n d d e p i c t n a t u r e d i r e c t l y , b u t then h e argues that p o e t r y

must use s c i e n c e t o r e j e c t a p a r t of nature and depict

culture indirectly.

Poetry must imitate a facet of t h e

n a t u r a l t h a t most imitates t h e realm of the c u l t u r a l .

l0wordsworth posits a dualist paradox when he

deploys this animatismic t r o p o l o g y - f o r

although science i s

an i n a n i m a t e body o f k n o w l e d g e , i t has n o flesh, no c o r p u s ,

and is thus a body w i t h o u t a body, yet this i n s e n s a t e ,

i n c o r p o r e a l form o f knowledge is not a s o u l , because i t has

no breath, no animus, and is t h u s a s o u l w i t h o u t a s o u l .

Science, l i k e t h e Monster in Frankenstein, is a m o r b i d

f i g u r e for the c o r r u p t i o n of s i m u l a t i o n .

Shelley i m p l i e s

t h a t s c i e n c e , n o t poetry, i s t h e r e p l i c a of a n error t h a t

threatens t o r e p l a c e t h e t r u t h o f t h e o r i g i n .

46

llFtichards a r g u e s that poetic wisdom is s brownian

movement:

"Suppose that[ ...]w e carry a n a r r a n g e m e n t o f msny

m a g n e t i c n e e d l e s , l a r g e and small, swung so t h a t they

i n f l u e n c e o n e a n o t h e r , some a b l e o n l y t o swing h o r i z o n t a l l y ,

others v e r t i c a l l y , others hung freely[..

disequilibriumf

...]c o r r e s p o n d s

.. ]

Each new

to a n e e d ; and the wagglings

which e n s u e as t h e system rearranges i t s e l f are our

responses[

....]

Sometimes the poem is itseif t h e i n f l u e n c e

w h i c h disturbs us, sometimes it is merely the means by which

an already existing disturbance can r i g h t i t ~ e l f . ' (15-18)

~

12~liotargues that p o e t i c wisdom i s a c h e r n i c a l

reaction:

"When the two g a s e s [ . ..]are mixed i n t h e p r e s e n c e

of a f i l a m e n t o f platinum, they form s u l p h u r o u s acid.

This

c o m b i n a t i o n t a k e s p l a c e only i f the p l a t i n u m i s p r e s e n t ;

nevertheless t h e newly formed acid c o n t a i n s n o t r a c e of

platinum, and t h e p l a t i n u m itself i s a p p a r e n t l y u n a f f e c t e d ;

has remained i n e r t , neutral, and unchanged.
poet i s the shred of p l a t i n u m [ .

...]

The mind o f t h e

[Tlhe more p e r f e c t the

a r t i s t , - t h e more completely separate i n him w i l l be t h e man

who suf fers and t h e mind which creates" ( 7-8 )

" ~ a u l s o nhas provided one of the most

theoretically comprehensive surveys of s u c h sciences when he
plots the epistemic transition from the organismic paradigm
of literature to the cyborganisrnic paralogy of information:
"[ais science disqualifies the medium through which we have

experienced and spoken the world, language and culture as we

have known them are swept away at an astonishing rate" so
that, " [ i l f we want to preserve something of our
subjectivityl
new[ ,

...1,

. . ]noises of

then we must open Our texts to the

science" ( 5 2 ) .

" ~ a u d r i l l a r d implies that , as a " [ ' plataphysician

at twenty" (l996a:83), he derives much of his irony from a
scientific vocabulary--particularly when he indulges in his
own hyperbole of molecular metaphors, be they quantum,

fractal, genetic, etc.

Genosko remarks that, for

Baudrillard, s u c h language does not evoke the rhetorical

equivalent of scientific legitimation; instead, the nomad
value of t h e s e modifiers r i s e s in indirect relation to their
absence -of meaning:

they constitute a "science fiction

practised in the service of the symbolic" (106).

48

1 5 ~ e y e r a b e n dwrites:

"NO idea is ever examined in

a l 1 its ramifications and no view is e v e r given al1 t h e

chances [thst] it deserves" ( 4 9 ) for "[tlheories are

abandoned and superseded by more f a s h i o n a b l e accounts long

before they have had an opportunity to show their virtues"

(40). Voodoo, for example, offers science an insight into

(heretofore unknown) a s p e c t s of pharmacology even though t h e
practice of voodoo ignores al1 theories of science.

We

might thus imagine that al1 absurd concepts merely await the
proper context for their errors to be redeemed as t r u t h s .

49
Millenial 'Patavhssics:

The Poetics of an Imaninarv Science

"[Al11 science is a n a l y s i s r a t h e r than

literature, i s it not?"

(Jarry:1989:106)

" J o a n was guizzical, studied 'pataphysical

science in the home, l a t e nights al1 alone

with a test-tube."

(Lennon, McCartney 1 9 7 0 )

"[Tlhe mind is a ['lpataphysical camera[

Set the[...]shutter

....]

speed to l/infinity

in order to c a t c h t h e universal everlasting

moment."

(Jirgens 1986:S)

The Millenary Problem

' P a t a p h y s i c s has so far proven daunting to c r i t i c s

because of its academic f r i v o l i t y and hermetic p e r v e r s i t y ;
c o n s e q u e n t l y , critics have o f t e n defined

'pataphysics as

more problematic than theorematic, reading Jarry only by

focussing on t h e dramaturgy o f h i s l i f e , not on the
philosophy of his work-as

than what he wrote.

if

how he lived is

more a r t f u l

Few critics have recognized that, far

from simply being the idiolect of an alcoholic, 'pataphysics

is a surrational perspective t h a t h s s had an extensive,

yet

f orgotten, influence upon the canonic history of radical

poetics.

Few critics have recognized that 'petaphysics

actually informs the innovation of the p o s t m o d e r n .

Not only

does this avant-garde pseudo-science valourize whatever is

exceptional and paralogical; it also sets the parameters for

the contemporary relationship between science and p o e t r y .

Jarry may precede t h e French word 'pataphusique w i t h an

apostrophe in o r d e r to avoid punning, but ironically his
neologism is still polysemic, s i n c e the French idiom for the

English word "flair," J a patte (the band, or "paw," of the

artist) appears in the homophonic p h r a s e patte & physique-the f l a i r of physics:

Ubu, for example, is a slapstick

comedian (pataud physique) of unhealthy o b e s i t y ( p a t e u x

physique), whose bodily language (patois physique) fomenta
an astounded physics

(gpatge phvsique) that is not your

physics (pas ta physique).

The apostrophe denotes that,

while wordplay in the sciences is absent by edict, it is

still present by proxy, s i n c e even truth is a language-game

that carr never efface its s t a t u a as a language-game.
Torma avers:

As

"Ttlhe word true means ~ r e c i s e l yno th in^ here

and succumbs under a f

' l ~ a t a ~ h ~ s i ~aw-swipe"
cal
(Hale

145 )

Jarry argues that, for ' p a t a p h y s i c s , r e a l i t y does n o t

exist, except as an as if, a comparative apperception, in

51
which a 'pataphysician, might conjure a reality to explore-almost as if "[tlhe world was simply an immense ship"

(1989:103)--a sieve perhaps, with a 'pataphysician at the

helm.

Baudrillard argues that, f o r "Jarryites," al1 s u c h

denials o f reality (including those now cited in quantum

physics) entai1 a fantasy about the omnipotence of thought--

its power to dream events into being, to change the world

through the

ur

of simulation (1990:80)e

suggests when explicating 'pataphysics:

As McCaffery
"[bleyond

mendacityl . . . )is the vitality of articulation which carries

its own positive implications:

that a l 1 events are capable

of alteration, that a lie attacks language at its weakest

fabricative point:

reality itself" (1986:200).

'Pataphysics uses s u c h sophistic reasoning in order to

suggest that the ability of science to repeat its results,

to foment new advances, is fortuitous, since it is
gratuitous, given that no necessity determines whether or
not reality has to be representable or even comprehensible
to any viewpoint.

Sandomir, for example, adopts this stance

when he suggests that, because "Existence has no more reason

to exist than reason has to exist" and because "the
manifestations of existence are aberrant and their necessity
entirely contingent," a 'pataphysician might easily argue
that "'Pataphysics precedes Existence" (1960d:170) insofar

52

as s u c h a s c i e n c e c r e a t e s i n advance the reality that it

explores.

For Jarry, science is nothing more than a

tautological recursiveness that only finds what it seeks:

reality that proves itself to be both existent and rational.

A Scizntific Classicism

Initially lampooning the curriculum of the physics

master pre ~ k b e r tat the ~ ~ c de
k eRennes, 'pataphysics
subsequently evolves in a fragmentary manner through three
political contexts of literary p e r s o n a e :

Ubu (who mocks the

power of a m o n a r c h ) ; Sengle (who mocks the power of a

soldier); and Faustroll (who mocks the power of a scho1ar)--

al1 three attacking the quiddity of both the real and the
true in order to show t h a t , when f a c e d w i t h relativistic
perspectives, "[ulniversal assent is [an] incomprehensible

prejudice" (1965:192).

Jarry develops this precept most

expansively in his "Neo-Scientific Novel" a b o u t Faustroll,

whose absurd voyage aboard a sieve takes him to the realm of

Ethernity, where his exploits lampoon some of the popular

science of the fin de siacle, particularly the hydrodynamic

lectures of Boys and the thermodynamic lectures of Kelvin.

Jarry parodies the d i s c o u r s e of such scientific

luminaries, who attempt to demonstrate the utility of

53
science through the dramaturgie performance of a mechanical
experiment.

Rather t h a n build operative devices for

harnessing thought (as Boys and Kelvin might do), the

'pataphysician must instead build excessive d e v i c e s for

unleashing thought--devices like the uriaarv jet, which

trills music, or the robotic Sun, which churns fleme:

the

former machine distorting the work of Boys, who must explain

the sonic resonation of fluid propulsion by referring to a

mechanism built from glass-tubes, rubber-sheets, and waterjets (1959:103); the latter machine distorting the work of
Kelvin, who must explain the mechanical tropes of solar
convection by referring to a mechanism built from paddlewheels, screw-gears, and pulley-winches

(1889:379).

Jarry imagines s u c h parodic devices in order to

sabotage the Newtonian classicism that has traditionally

characterized the epistemological differentiation between
physics and metaphysics.

Rather than subject the emergent

sciences of both hydrodynamics and thermodynamics to the

problematic determinism of a mechanical philosophy ( a s Boys
and Kelvin might do), Jarry attempts instead to accentuate

the surrational potentials of such physics so that what is

randorn and absurd might f u l f il1 the anomalous imperat ive of

a cyborganic philosophy.

While Kelvin describes reality as

a liquid system of springs and weights, whose gyrostatic

54

elasticity approaches an inexorable condition of inertia

(239)' Jarry believes t h a t t h e avant-garde pseudo-science o f

'pataphysics can i n t e r v e n e in the process of such a reality

i n order to perturb the entropy of its banal order.

Jarry endeavours to demonstrate that, like alchemy,

which reduces al1 scientia t o an erotic s y s t e m of symbolic

exchange, even the chernical sciences comprise a s e t of
metaphorical abstractions, each laden with its own libidinal

intensity.

Jarry does not borrow scientific c o n c e p t s so

much as scientific c o n c e i t s , doing s o i n order ta imagine a

kind of "counter-dynamic," a catachemv (1965:253), whose

d i s c o u r s e can allegedly r e c o n c i l e the antonyrnic diammetry

between the axiological o b j e c t i v i t y of t h e o n t i c world and
the m y t h o l o g i c a l subjectivity o f t h e semic w o r l d :

"the

G e o m e t e r [ . ..]knowest al1 things by the means of lines drawn

in different directions, and h a s t given us the v e r i t a b l e

portrait o f three persons of God in three escutcheons which

a r e the quart essence of Tarot symbols" (251).

Even in

science,- t h e figura1 is merely the alembic of the literal.

A Scientific Radicalism

Jarry may intend to transform the present c o n t e x t o f a

posited reality, inspiring the anarchic p o l i t i c s of

permanent rebellion among much of the avant-garde;

nevertheless, s u c h critics as Shattuck and Sandomir have
argued at length and with fervor that, because 'pataphysics
is an alleged science o f indifference, such a science can
never support any political intention--unless it supports

al1 of them.

Shattuck argues that, b e c a u s e "'[plataphysics

preaches no r e b e l l i o n [ . . . ] , no political r e f o r m , " such a

science never attempts to change events:
['lpataphysician[

...]suspends

"the

al1 values" ( 1 9 8 4 : 1 0 4 ) .

Sandomir, likewise, argues that, b e c a u s e "'[plataphysics

does not enlighten any more than it should enlighten," such

a science n e v e r attempts t o improve things:

"[bJecause of

this, orgies of salvation are a v o i d e d " (1960e:173).

Shattuck argues that "'[plataphysics attempts no c u r e s "

( 1 0 4 ) even though Jarry has expanded upon a childhood
b u r l e s q u e of pedagogic authority in order to foment a s p i r i t

of revolt, be it anti-bourgeois or anti-philistine.

Although Shattuck may define such a nomad science as a ludic

philosophy for stoic epicureans since

"[ilt

allows each

person to live his life as an exception, proving no law but

his own" ( 1 0 6 ) , Shattuck a l s o disarms the radical anarchy of

s u c h Nietzschean sentiments in order to equate 'pataphysics
with a postmodern will, not of wholehearted iconoclasm, but

of halfhearted compliance:

"the etiquette of 'Pataphysics:

ironic conformity" (105).

Shattuck, however, cannot

acknowledge that what he regards as an egalitarian

c e l e b r a t i o n of indifference may instead be nothing more than

a parody of our own scientific impartiality.

Sandomir, likewise, argues that 'pataphysics is

apolitical in its incertitude:

"although democracy o r

demophily are[ . . . )only one fiction among others, the

['Ipataphysician is without doubt the undisputed holder of
the absolute r e c o r d of democracy:

without even rnaking an

effort he beats the egalitarians at their o w n game," f o r

"[tlhe fact is that he denies n o t h i n g ; he exsuperatesn--

"Ihle is n o t there to do away with t h i n g s but to subsume

them" (1960c:179).

Sandomir, however, does not seem to

recognize that, since 'pataphysics studies exceptions in

order to make the weaker case, the stronger, such irony

always engages in a fervent dispute with the power of its

present reality-even

if such dispute represents, what

Baudrillard might call, the "transpolitical," relying as it

does upon the fatalistic strategies of simulation ( 1 9 9 0 : 2 5 ) .

Shattuck and Sandomir may forget that, like Nietzsche,

Jarry attempts t o radicalize philosophy, not simply to
preserve metaphysics through an impotent negation of it, but
to displace metaphysics through a radical mutation within

it.

Since

Jarry develops 'pataphysics most expansively

through Faustroll and his exploits in Ethernity, this survey

concentrates upon the third phase of 'pataphysics in order

to draw such parallels between Jarry and N i e t z s c h e .

The

survey then goes on to discuss the three declensions of the

exceptional (the anomalos, t h e s s z s ~ i a ,and the clinamen) in
order to itemize their 'pataphysical similarities to modern

tropes that have provided a basis for anti-metaphysical

meta-philosophies--the assumption being that 'pataphysics

represents an unwritten, but intrinsic, intertext to many of

the radical t a c t i c s found in deconstructive methodologies

The Modernits of Jarry

'Pataphysics for Jarry resembles the philosophy of

Nietzsche, insofar as both writers make a case for

pers~ectivism. M. Bourdon at the Iqcge de Rennes is known

to have taught Jarry the philosophy of Nietzsche before its

translation into French (Beaumont 21), and only a few

critics,- particularly Dufresne ( 1 9 9 3 : 2 6 ) and McCaffery

(1997:11), have intimated that Nietzsche provides a

critically neglected, but integrally important, set of

antecedents for 'pataphysics.

Just as Nietzsche has striven

"to look at science in the perspective of t h e artist"

(1966:19), greeting al1 philosophy with skepticism, sa also

58

does Jarry combine the noetic and the poetic into a genre
that questions al1 epistemological prerequisites.

For Jarry

and Nietzsche, knowledge itself is so deceptive that it

cannot even be corrected by this knowledge about knowledge.

Perspectivism s u g g e s t s that reality does not exist,

except as the interpretive projection of a phenomenal
perspective--which

is to say that, for Nietzsche, reality is

only the effect of a 'Jraumwelt, in which "there are many

kinds of 'truths,' and consequently there is no truth"

(1968:540) since "[tlruths are illusions which we have
forgotten are illusions" ( 1 9 7 9 : 8 4 ) .

Jarry likewise argues

that reality is but one aspect of an E t h e r n i t y , in w h i c h

"there are o n l y hallucinations, or perceptions," and every
"perception is an hallucination which is true" (1989:103).

Reality is nothing more than a comparative apperception, an

as if for a disparate collection of different viewpoints,
each one creating the true for itself, while opposing every
o t h e r view.

Each perspective is thus a solipsistic

singularity t h a t has no recourse to perceptual consensus. 1

Science, for N i e t z s c h e , is merely a viewpoint that does

not explicate a cornmon reality so much as interpret a unique

fantasy:

"[tlhe habits of our senses have woven us into

lies and deception of sensation:

these are the basis of al1

our judgments and

' knowledge ' ,"

absolutely no escape[

...]into

for which " there is

the real world" (Babich 8 9 ) .

Science, for Jarry, is also such "a statement of what is

visible to the mortal eye ( it is always a matter of mortal
eyes, hence vulgar and[

...]flawedi. . . ] , and

the sensory

organ being a cause of error, the scientific instrument

simply magnifies that sense in the direction of its e r r o r ) "

(1989:105).

A s Daumal avers, no science can exceed the

nooscopic limit of its own anthropic focus, and t h u s

"['p]ataphysics will measure[ ...] the extent to which
everyone is stuck in the rut of individual existence" ( 3 3 ) .

Jarry adopts such a solipsistic viewpoint, in which

perception "s~mbolicallvattributes the properties of

objects, described bv their virtuality, to tbeir lineaments"

(1965:193), the 'pataphysician wilfully mistaking the

superfice of the image for the substance of the thing:

"he

no longer made any distinction at a l 1 between his thoughts

and actions nor between his dreaming and[ ...] waking"

(1989:103).

Just as Nietzsche describes reality as a

vacuous surface, in which we g r a s p "nothing b u t the mirror"

(1982:141), so also does Jarry describe a r e a l i t y of

"parallel mirrors" that reflect their own "reciprocal
emptiness" (1965:211).

Like Berkeley, both Jarry and

Nietzsche a r g u e that esse is p e r c i ~ i ,but while Berkeley

60

posits a panoptic absolute, whose gaze sustains a l 1 other

views, Jarry and Nietzsche argue thst no view is absolute.

'Pataphysics in fact sees that e v e r y viewpoint is

dissolute-oincluding its own-since

for a l 1 o t h e r s .

no view can o f f e r a norm

Jarry even suggests that, because invisible

worlds transect our perceived r e a l i t y at many points across

many s c a l e s , t h e cosmos a l m o s t resembles a heteroclite

archipelago of monolithic l i g h t h o u s e s - s t r a n g e

islands with

t h e i r own "obelischolychnies" (1965:201), each of which

illuminates a particular haven for its own idiocratic

truth.'

Only eyes adapted to a specif ic spectrum can d e t e c t

a given signal; hence, some l i g h t s go unseen, particularly

by the h e m e r a l o ~ e s ,the dayblind who see o n l y in darkness:

"for moles[...],

a lighthouse is as invisible as[ . . . ]the

i n f r a r e d rays" (201)

A beacon may even sound i t s alarms at

a frequency too extreme for auditory r e s p o n s e :

" l n 3 0 waves

break against it , and t h u s no sound guides one t o it" ( 201 )

'Pataphysics avers that even science itself is just

another beacon, one t h a t g u i d e s instinct away from a c o o l ,

but natural, truth toward a warrn, but c u l t u r a l , t r u t h .

Science thus behaves l i k e a wolf that no l o n g e r bays a t t h e

ire of a t e r r i b l e moon, b u t only a t t h e glow o f an e l e c t r i c

lamp.

Such a pharos may emit l i g h t at a d i f f e r e n t

wavelength, but docs so at an equivalent luminosity,

replacing the vulgar idolatry of belief with the more subtle
egomania of reason:

"[s}cience, say the bourgeois, has

dethroned superstition" (1989:105) when in fact science has

simply ensconced itself as the successor to s u c h credulity
in order to preside over (superstare) the same anthropic
biases of these antiquary errors.

For e v e r y s o l a r truth of

a royal science, there is this lunar truth of a nomad

science--a forbidden knowledge that history must o u t s h i n e .

>Pataphysics confronts s u c h a millenary conundrum with

imaginary solutions, whose metaphors of exception have
perhaps lent as much to Derrida as they have owed to
Nietzsche, providing an unwritten intertext for postmodern
philosophy.

J u s t as McCaffery has discussed Nietzsche in

terms of a "Zarathustran 'pataphysics" ( 1997 : 1 1 )

so also

has Dufresne discussed Derrida in terms of a

"[Dleconstructive ['Ipataphysics"

(1993:26), and Stillman

goes so far as to argue that "Jarry's

desire to escape

metaphys-ics returns today, newly masked under the

philosophical thrust of deconstruction" ( 39 ) since Jarry
offers a poetic theory of contradictory undecidability,

continually inverting a dyadic hierarchy, while momentarily

subverting its mutual exclusion-neither
surpassing the dialectic:

cancelling nor

not Aufhebung, but S t e i g e r u n g .

62

Dufresne o b s e r v e s t h a t " t h e s h e e r c o i n c i d e n c e [ . . . ]
which c o n j o i n s d e c o n s t r u c t i o n t o [ ' J p a t a p h y s i c s i s worth
f u r t h e r examination" ( 2 9 ) s i n c e "it is h e r e [ . . . ] t h a t

Derrida, Jarry, and N i e t z s c h e form a n u n h o l y t r i n i t y , a

t r u l y grand[ . . . )s t y l e of epiphenomenal p r o p o r t i o n s " (31)--a
s t y l e t h a t d o e s n o t simply claim, as t r u e , t h a t no claim is

true, b u t that t r i e s i n s t e a d to imagine a d o u b l e s c i e n c e ,

whose episteme no l o n g e r presumes in s d v a n c e that we even
know how t o know.
know what being
is r e a l [ . . . ] ;

&,

A s N i e t z s c h e avers, " [ o l n e would have t o

i n o r d e r to d e c i d e w h e t h e r t h i s o r t h a t

i n t h e same way, what c e r t a i n t v i s , what

knowledgc i s , and the 1ike.--But

since we do n o t know this,

a c r i t i q u e of t h e f a c u l t y o f knowledge i s s e n s e l e s s :

how

should a tool be a b l e t o c r i t i c i z e itself when it c a n use

only i t s e l f for c r i t i q u e ? " ( B a b i c h 8 8 ) .

N i e t z s c h e r e v e a l s t h a t , for t h i s r e a s o n , "the problem

o f s c i e n c e c a n n o t b e recognized on t h e ground o f s c i e n c e "

(1966:18) since t o do so r e q u i r e s that s c i e n c e be u s e d t o

prove that i t c a n n o t be u s e d t o prove.

Nietzsche thus

evokes t h e c l a s s i c p a r a d o x t h a t has corne t o define

deconstructive ratiocination.

Sandomir has e v e n g o n e on t o

a f f i r m t h a t , of a l 1 the s c i e n c e s , " [ o l n l y 'Pataphysics[ . . . )

d o e s n o t explain i t s e l f b u t e s t a b l i s h e s i t s own p o s i t i o n

within a v i c i o u s c i r c l e " (1960b:176) i n o r d e r to claim what

63

science cannot admit:

condition of knowledge.

that the absurdity of tautology is a

A s Daumal avers, "['plataphysical

arguments do not necessarily set up systems designed to

demonstrate the truth of this or that proposition;" insteed,

"[tlhey generally develop as vicous circles and bring the

human spirit to a limit-state of stupor and scandal" (112).

Derrida, for example, d o e s not simply oppose a thesis

with its antithesis, nor does he even equate them to a third

term of synthesis--nor does Derrida simply invert this
system of value between thesis and antithesis, but affirms

(and denies) both sides of this dialectic, revealing the

undecidable contradiction that always appears to makes such
a relation both possible and impossible at the same time:
"[tlhe break with this structure of belonging can be
announced only through[ . . . ]a certain strateaic arrangement

which, within the field of metaphysical opposition, uses the

strengths of the field t o turn its o w n stratagems against
it, producing a force of dislocation that spreads itself

throughout the entire system, fissuring it in every

direction and thoroughly delimitinq it" ( 1 9 7 8 : S O ) .

J a r r y , Nietzsche, and Derrida, do not defend the truth

of their own sophism so much as f l o u t t h e truisms o f truth

itself--its self-evidence, its self-awereness.

Daumal even

64

o b s e r v e s t h a t "whatever i s self-evident cloaks itself in

absurditv as its o n l s means of ~ercep-"--"

[ w J hence

the humorous appearance of [ ' ] pataphysical reasoning " ( 3 1 )

whose ludicrous syllogisms lead to an infinitude of

simulation:

lt[']pataphysical sophism is an a p p a r e n t sophism

which envelops an apparent truth which envelops an apparent

sophism which envelops an apparent truth, and so on ad

infinitum" (111)--or as Torma o b s e r v e s :

J ~ l u tmetaphssics

b e h i n d r'lpatapbvsics and vou make it merels the facade for

a belief" when in fact "the essence of I ' l ~ a t a ~ h u s i c s
is
that it is the facade of a facade, behind which there is

nothingW--only the black abyss of total doubt (Hale 145).

T h e Ethernitv of Faustroll

Jarry situstes h i s own 'pataphysical sensibility in

such a posited r e a l i t y , an imaginary dimension that he calls

Ethernitv, a "NOWHERE, or SOMEWHERE, which is the same

thing" ( 1 9 6 5 : 248)--an interzone where the reference of a

sign does not describe, but conjures, the existence of the

real through the

ur

of simulation.

Ethernity resembles a

state of maximum e n t r o p p - a nullified condition whose

potential goes unmeasured, unobserved, its e i ~ e n s t a t e
corresponding to "the perplexity of a man outside time and
s p a c e , who has lost h i s [ . . . ]measuring rod, and h i s tuning

fork"

248 )

Like the Maxwell Demon, the 'pataphysician

intervenes in such a void of thermodynamic equilibriurn,

sorting its randomly distributed atoms into narrowly
constructed forms (249)--creating, in this c a s e , a
spectroscope whose measurements cause a fiat lux ex nihilo.

Ethernity expresses a reality built out of thought

alone--a realm whose fantastic substance, "ether," refers
not only to the hypothetical medium that can transport

lightwaves through a vacuum (as is the case for the photic

theory of Kelvin), but also to the anaesthetic vapour that
can transform awareness in an addict (as is the case for the
mystic vision of Jarry).

Whether scientific or mythopoeic,

both kinds of ether provide an imaginary solution to the

problem of illumination. -Even light itself must express the
ontological expediency of an imagined paradigm.

Just as

quantum physics has interpreted the act of measurement

itself the collapse of a mathematical wavefunction,
realizing reality rather than reporting it, so also does
'pataphysics reveal that "the function of navigators was to
make land" (199)--not to find it.

Ethernity is simply the milieu for al1 such imaginary

perception, be it a scientific mode1 or a novel literature.
Books there become an archipelago, where voyagers can travel

66

together from t e x t to text, as though from isle to isle (be

it the land of Cack, of Ptyx, of Her, etc.).

Each port of

cal1 is a haven for t h e allegorical impressions of either an

artist or a writer, as if such motifs are "excellent
quintessences1

...]brought

back by inquisitive men from their

travels" (1965:203)--for example:

"[flrom Rabelais, the

little bells to which the devils danced during the tempest";

"from ~autramont, the scarab, beautiful as the trembling of
hands in alcoholism" (1965:191).

Such images p r o v i d e a

Wunderkammern of uncanny specimens for an imaginary

scientist, who collects as though without exception, al1
cases of exception--al1 the rareties of teratism.

Ethernity presents to us a literary universe to be

explored b y a science that must learn in turn to explore

itself as literary; consequently, the exploits of Faustroll

in Ethernity resemble the voyages of Gulliver in Laputa o r
even t h e adventures of A l i c e in Wonderland (insofar as al1

three fantasies use a nomad journey t o lampoon a royal

science)-. Swift and Carroll, however, use such nonsense to

expose the aporias of the rational on behalf of reform,

whereas Jarry uses h i s nonsense to induce his own visions of

the schizoid on behalf of revolt.

What Swift berates in the

science of Boyle and Hooke (eclecticism), Jarry admires in

the science of Boys and Kelvin.

What Carroll debates on the

67

surface w i t h Humpty Dumpty (amphilogiem), Jarry e x t e n d s to

the extreme with Bosse-de-Nage.

What Alice and Gulliver

f e a r to become (schizonoiac), Faustroll already is.

Faustroll is a 'pataphysical philosopher, who has gone

beyond good and evil in order to invoke the reverie o f a

schizoid superman--a parodic version o f Zarethustra, the

k i n d of exceptional personality that Sengle might describe

as one of t h e "superior intelligences, who are few," but who

are often mistaken for the infirm or the insane since "the
bourgeois is not learned enough to study the body and the
scientist is too learned[...]to

(1989:106).

study the spirit"

The Ubermensch defies al1 such Manicheanism,

fusing the sou1 of a supernal "Faust" with t h e body of an

"'

infernal "Troll,

parodying the telic myths of Darvinian

evolution by collating beast, human, and deity into an

apostate "tetragon" (1965:254)--the Hephistophelian image of

an hermaphroditic satyr, for whom God is just an artifice of

humanity--"man to an improper degree" ( 1965: 1 8 3 )

.'

Faustroll is quite literally, a literary creation, his

body becoming a book--a papyrus cadaver that can unscroll to

divulge the s e c r e t s of a poetic vision, "his eyes, like two

capsules of ordinary writing-ink" ( 1 9 6 5 : 9 ) .

J u s t as Jarry

makes a spectacle of himself, adopting the mannerisms o f his

68

characters (particularly Ubu), so also d o e s the Ubermensch

embody 'pataphysics through the syntax of his own corpus--a

pidouille perhaps, which charts "the progress cf t h e solid

future entwined[...]in

s p i r a l s t ' so that, "[llike a musical

score, al1 art and a l 1 science were written in the

curves[

...],

and their progression to a n infinite degree was

prophesied therein" ( 1 9 6 5 : 2 4 5 ) .

For such a superman, whose

life is a text that d i s p l a y s the grammar of flux and flow,

language itself becomes an absurd vessel--a sieve of words,
set adrift upon the oceanic surface of a protean reality.

Faustroll indeed sets sail in such a s h i p , whose

manifest does not itemize the ballast of a boat s o much as
the content of a book:

i t s hvpertext of influence--a

literal "network" where the science of Boys and the poetry

of Lear c a n fuse into a conceit about language.

While Lear

writes nonsense about the Jumblies, who "went to sea in a

Sieve, they did,/ In a S i e v e they went to seatl (l947:7l),

Boys proves that, despite such an absurd notion, the surface

tension of water can indeed support a sieve:

experimentl

...]illustrates

"[tlhis

hou difficult it is to

write[ . . . ] perfect n o n s e n s e " ( 2 9 ) .

Boys, however, does not

make sense of a poem so much as get stuck in its mesh.

For

J a r r y , such a sieve is s l s o a t r o p e for a s e m i o t i c gridwork

--a chart r i v e n with holes, i t s network able to rest upon

the superfice of reelity but unable to hold its substance.

Faustroll regards this reality as the surface tension

of either an elastic film o r a crystal skin-whatever

constitutes a superf icial experience, whose sol ipsism

requires a mathesis sinaularis in order to accommodate the

specificity of each perspective.

Regular science must

standardize such experience, according to the substantive

metaphysics of a capital economy, so that each viewpoint can

be replicated and substituted for e v e r y o t h e r viewpoint.

Units o f scale function like rates of value in a monetary
standard so that t o measure is t o judge the whole by one
piece--to make one case of exception the basis for al1 other

conceptions.

The science of 'pataphysics, however,

expresses amazement at the very arbitrariness of such

measurement, arguing that the generality of s u c h standards
must always efface the speciality of a n y anomalies.

Faustroll defies this demand for uniform metrics by

acting out a spectacle of h y p e r b o l i c exectitude i n order to

force each unique standard to an extreme beyond al1

standards (hence, his absurd use of d e c i m a l exponents and
quantum diameters as units of scale).

He suggests that, if

science must pretend that its measure is no caprice, then

the act of def ining a unit of non-density according to a

70

quantitp of vacuum seems far less arbitrary than the act of

defining a unit of d e n s i t y according t o a quantity of water

(1965:193).

1s not measurement just a morbid drive to

abolish the irony of such a vacuum, be i t astronomical or

infinitesimal--the very irony that i s the abyss of

'pataphysics i t s e l f ?

1s not science afraid to admit its own

cognitive innumeracy when faced with the abysmal v e r t i g o , if

not the horror vacui, in the void of s u c h a ~ r a u m w e l t ? ~

'Pataphysics argues that every truth of science d e p e n d s

upon such questions of scale, be t h e y micro or macro (like

the schism in physics between atomic laws and cosmic lawsl.

Crookes, for example, has argued that a shift in scale rnight
cause an observer to rnistake both capillary action and

brownian motion for forces stronger than gravity

609 )

Citing Swift, Crookes e v e n says t h a t the ability to study

thermal combustion under secure conditions may depend upon
the dimensions of an observer:

for lilliputians, chernistry

f a i l s because they can generate only insufficient heat; for

brobdinagians, chernistry fails because they can generate

only superabundant heat (611). Citing Crookes, Jarry in

turn uses this i m a g e r y to explain 'pataphysical

perspectivism, depicting F a u s t r o l l as a miniature homunculus
who changes size i n order to explore t h e s u r f a c e of a leaf.

S u r f a c e t e n s i o n , when experienced at a s u c h a small

scale, causes w a t e r to become a p l a s t i c solid r a t h e r than a n
a q u e o u s f l u i d , a "malleable g l a s s " ( 1 9 6 5 : 1 9 5 ) ,

whose

e x p l o d e d d r o p l e t s a r e not w e t a n d s o f t , b u t d r y and h a r d ,
l i k e diamonds.

The ministurized 'pataphysician r e v e a l s t h a t

even a r a i n d r o p c a n c o n t a i n s microcosm,

"a globe, t w i c e h i s

s i z e , t h r o u g h whose transparency t h e o u t l i n e s of the

u n i v e r s e a p p e a r e d t o him g i g a n t i c a l l y enlarged, w h i l s t his
own image, r e f l e c t e d d i m l y l

...], was

magnified" (195).

The

d r o p l e t is a m e t a p h o r for the eye i t s e l f , a f l u i d s p h e r e , an

" o v o i d m y o p i a , " whose l e n s d o e s n o t inspect t h e real so much
as d i s t o r t i t , e a c h drop " d r a w i n g a l o n g b e n e a t h it t h e image

of t h e t a n g e n t i a l p o i n t of t h e u n i v e r s e [ .

.. ] , m a g n i f y i n g

its

f a b u l o u s c e n t e r t t (195)--in t h i s case, t h e a l i b i f o r a
phantasmal solipsism:

t h e image o f man h i m s e l f .

N i e t z s c h e argues t h a t , when s u c h a science s t u d i e s the

r e a l , s c i e n c e a d m i r e s the t r u e , not because the t r u e g r a n t s

itself e i t h e r a use o r a n a i m , but b e c a u s e t h e t r u e t r e a t s

itself as both a l a w and a n end:

"the f a i t h i n s c i e n c e ,

which after a l 1 e x i s t s u n d e n i a b l y , cannot owe its o r i g i n t o

such a c a l c u l u s o f utility; i t must have o r i g i n a t e d i n s p i t e

of

t h e f a c t t h a t t h e [ . . . ]d a n g e r o u s n e s s o f

truth,'

of

(1974:281).

'the w i l l t o

' t r u t h a t any p r i c e ' is proved t o it c o n s t a n t l y "

The will t o t r u t h e n t a i l s , but e f f a c e s , i t s own

72

will to error.

For 'pataphysics, the threat of error finds

itself expressed through the three declensions of exception

(the anomalos, the s v z y a i a , and the clinamen)--three events
that involve a monstrous encounter, be it in t h e form o f an
aporia, a chiasm, or a swerve--whatever

takes on the

character of alterity in the aftermath of some accident.

Anomalos:

The Princi~leof Variance

Anomalos i s the first declension of exception:

anomaly of the aporia.

the

Differing from every other t h i n g in

a systern that values the norm of equivalence--it s e r v e s the

will to disrupt.

Jarry may posit this notion within his own

modernist context ( t h e Ausnahrne in Nietzsche, or perhaps

even t h e Excluded i n Fort), but such a principle of variance
does provide a p r e t e x t for postmodern philosophy about the

theme of paralepsis (for example, the s u ~ ~ l e m e nin

t Derrida,
the parasite in Serres, etc.)--excesses

that replace what

they augment, operating against, but within, the limits of

the syst-em that must exclude them.

The anomslos is the

repressed part of a rule which ensures that the rule does

not work.

It is a difference which makes a difference and

is thus synonymous with the cybernetic definition of

interferent information--the very measure of surprise.

Nietzsche argues that, wherever life seem repetitive,

poetry fulfills a desire for freedom, but wherever l i f e

seems disruptive, science fulfills a d e s i r e for boredom:

"the first instinct of the knower is to search for r u l e s ,

although naturally enough with the confirmation of a rule
nothing is as yet 'known' ! - - [ f l r o m

this we get the

superstition of the physicists"--"[t]hey

feel 'securey: but

behind this intellectual security stands the calming of

thev want r u l e s because these strip the

frightfulness:

world of i t s fearsomeness" (Babich 97).6

What repeats has a

it is an expected case, a reprise, and thus

certain o r d e r :

poses no problem, because it implies the security of a

paredigrno-but what does not repeat has an uncertain order:

it is an excepted case, a s u r p r i s e , and thus poses a

problem, because it implies the insecurity of a paralogy.

Nietzsche argues that

"

' [ t]hings' do not behave

regularly, according to a r u l e " ( 1 9 6 8 : 6 3 4 ) .

curate events

BO

Rules do n o t

much as d e f e n d us from their threat.

Rules

do not describe the anomaly of our reality so much as

restrain the anxiety of its mystery:

"Illet us bewere of

saying that there are laws in nature" for "[tlhere are only

necessities" (1974:168)--there
mutiny.

is no decree, no thrall, no

Rules are simply i n d u c e d as an expedient, not of

cognizance, but of ignorance.

For this reason, Jarry

criticizes t h e truth o f such r u l e s by a r g u i n g t h a t , w h i l e

" [ m ] o s t p e o p l e have seen a c e r t a i n phenomenon precede o r

f o l l o w some other phenomenon most o f t e n , and conclude

therefrom t h a t i t w i l l ever be t h u s [ .

. .] , this

is true o n l y

i n t h e majority o f cases, depends upon the p o i n t o f view,

and is codif ied only for convenience--if t h a t " ( 1965:193 )

Jarry argues that t h e laws of the universe are not

laws, b u t " c o r r e l a t i o n s o f exceptions, a l b e i t more f r e q u e n t

o n e s , b u t i n any case a c c i d e n t a l data, w h i c h r e d u c e d t o t h e

status o f u n e x c e p t i o n a l e x c e p t i o n s , possess no l o n g e r even

t h e virtue o f originality" (1965:193).

Rules must e f f a c e

t h e idiocracy of t h e anomalos, b u t ironically such a r u l e

a b o u t r u l e s already risks t h e anomaly o f p a r a d o x i t s e l f .
W h i l e a m e t a p h y s i c a l science must r u l e out e x c e p t i o n s , s u c h

e x c e p t i o n s are t h e r u l e (in which c a s e they are no l o n g e r

e x c e p t i o n s ) ; i n s t e s d , the rule i s i t s e l f the e x c e p t i o n i n a

'pataphysical science that r u l e s o u t t h e rule.

of

The science

'pataphysics delights in such p a r a d o x e s because i t s logic

studies w h a t l o g i c exempts.

A s Nietzsche avers, "there

a c t u a l l y are t h i n g s t o be s a i d i n favor o f t h e exception

provided t h a t it never wants t o become the r u l e " ( 1 9 7 4 : 131 )

F o r t dramatizes t h i s p r i n c i p l e of variance i n a k i n d of
' p a t a p h y s i c a l e n c y c l o p a e d i a , whose itinerary bombards i t s

Victorian r e a d e r s with bizarrerie, ironically documenting,

as though without e x c e p t i o n , cases of exception, be they

climatological (tiny f r o g s , for exemple, falling from

temperate s k i e s ) or archaeological (iron t o o l s , for example,

hailing from neolithic times)--case after case, in which

science ignores evidence in order t o make aberrancies f i t
t h e procrustean.'

H i s parodic theories about the as i f of

extraterrestrial i n t e r v e n t i o n i s r n offers a forum, not t o

decode exceptional phenornena, but t o debunk s c i e n t i f i c
prejudice.

No theorem, only decorum, p r e v e n t s science from

considering the possibility of s u c h an a l i e n visit.

1s not

t h i s v i s i t but a trope for the arriva1 of anomaly i t s e l f ?

1s n o t truth but a dogma that must alienate the anomalos?

Anomaly is, after all, like a stranger, estranged.

Whether damned (as in Fort), accursed (as in Bataille), o r

a b - i e c t (as in Kristeva) , s u c h anomaly refers to t h e anomie

of an e x c e s s , whose ambiguities t r a n s g r e s s the r u l e that

divides identity f rom a l t e r i t y

.'

For Baudrillard, hovever,

this metaphysics of anomie may not apply to a ' p a t a p h y s i c s

o f e x c e s s because "[alnomaly i s at play in an aleatory,

statistical field[
longer know[

. . . ]of variations and

.. . J t r a n s g r e s s i o n "

( 1990: 2 6 )

modulations which no

For metaphysics,

the anomalos is an infraction of a limit ( a difference in

specie), but for 'pataphysics, the anomalos is an aberration

76

from a curve ( a difference in degree).

surprise, a mutation--a
or perfidy (26).

The anomalos is a

"simple apparition" without tragedy

Not criminalized, but relativized, it

reveals t h f i t everything has the potential to be anomelous.

Faustroll even g o e s so far as t o define reality itself

as " t h a t which i s the e x c e p t i o n t o oneselfl' (l965:245), j u s t

as Nietzsche might suggest that, b e c s u s e this universe

constitutes an unlikely condition among an i n f i n i t y o f more

probable potential, "[tlhe astral order in which we live is
an exception," whose situation and duration has made

possible ''an exception o f exceptions:

organic" (1974:168).

t h e formation of the

Such an anomalos is the result n o t of

chance design, but of random errors-events

whose element of

surprise brings every rule t o life in a reprise without

either purpose or refrain.

Such an anomalos dares science

to r e c o n s i d e r its margin o f error, t h e t r i v i a l discrepancy

between diverse experiments, so t h a t w e might i n t u r n

imagine a universe where n o t h i n g hsppens twice--instead

each event arises from its own set o f exclusive accidents.

Sszsaia:

The P r i n c i ~ l eof Alliance

S V Z Y R ~is
~

s y z y g y of

the second declension of exception:

the chiasm.

the

Differing from every other thing in a

77

system that values the norm of difference--it serves the

will to confuse.

Jarry

may

posit this notion within a

mediaeval context (the Coniunctia of Avicenna, or perhaps

even the Mysteriurn of Paracelsus), but such a principle of

alliance d o e s provide a pretext for postmodern philosophy

about the theme of syncretism (for example, the chiasmus in
Derrida or the syzygy in Serres, etc.)--conceits which
conjoin as much as they disjoin, inverting, while equating,
the values of the binary that must support them.

The

s y z y ~ i ais the neglected part of a pair which ensures that

such a pair is neither united nor parted for more than an
instant.

It coincides with the laughter that erupts when we

eliminate differences in order to imagine the incornpossible.

J a r r y uses the s ~ z v ~ to
i a describe the synthesis of the

poetic and the noetic, as derived from a fragment, so that,

"during the s y z y g y of w o r d s [ . , . , ] one could have

reconstructed, through this facet, al1 art and al1 science"

(l965:245).

The word "syzygy" normally refers to a

celestial alignment of three planets, two of which are at

the opposite antipodes of their orbit around a third.

The

horizon that connects the two extremes of perihelion and

aphelion can provide a conceit for the dualism of conceit
itself--the coniunctia o ~ ~ o s i t o r unot
m
only between a
positive and its negative (this, not-this), but also between

78
such a binary relation and its plenary opposite.

The s y z y g y

of words reveals that language not only d e f i n e s , but also

deletes, this distance between extremes.
possibility of the incompossible:

It assumes the

Plus-and-Minus ( 2 ) .

Jarry suggests that, for "the dispute between the sign

Plus and the sign Minus," a philosopher can demonstrate "the
identity of opposites, by means of the mechanical d e v i c e

called the phssick-stick" (1965:252).

More excremental than

instrumental, this syrnbol of power lampoons phallogocentric

representation.

Not a priapic sceptre, but a toilet brush--

such a staff is an "uprooted phallus" (1965:lll) thst beats

the nomad koan, not the royal word, into its student.

The

device spins about its axis along a line that does not trace
out the c r o s s of the l a w so much as c r o s s out al1 trace of
the law:

"in each quarter of

every

one of your

rotations[ ...]y ou form a c r o s s with yourself" ( 1 1 1 ) .

The

device in motion both affirms and negates, becoming not only

an alchernical cipher for the holism of opposite parts, but

also a scientific symbol for a margin of probable error.

Lyotard also refers to this turning of a "bar which

separates the this from the not-this" (1993:15) when he

posits a linear device, whose stasis signifies a mandatory

division, but whose motion activates an aleatory confusion. 9

79

Just as Lyotard implies that such conjugality of revolution

c a n erase the temporality of difference, so also does Jarry

argue that the physicks-stick is a crank-shaft for a timemachine, whose syzygy reveals that "there are neither nights

nor days," neither systole nor diastole--no "pendulum

movements" (1989:103), only this intense instant, atemporal
and libidinal.

As

Jarry argues:

minus sign is ferninine;

plus sign is masculine--"[f]or the Geometer, these two signs

cancel each other out or impregnate each other, and there

resultsC...]their progeny, which becomes[ . . . ]zero, al1 the

more identical because they are contrary" (1965:252).

Daumal implies that s u c h a s ~ z s ~ irepeats

a
an Eastern
intuition, insofar as the equation of this and not-this
resembles what the Hindu cal1 Advaita--the negated duality,

in which "To know & = to know (Everything

- X)"

(l993:3l ) .

While "[gletting this idea into your head will h e l p you get
a firm footing in ['IPataphysics" ( 3 1 1 , such an idea has

often evoked only the mystical vulgarism of the New Age, in

which the likes of Capra and Zukav can now popularize the
similarity between the taoist mysticism of t h e East and the
quantum mechanics of the West ( s o that, for example, the

ambiguity between yin and y a n g now offers an oriental

metaphor for the ambiguity between particle and waveform).
For Daumal, the absurdity of such e x t r e m e s and t h e i r

equation is laughable--but this laughter is itself what

negates dualism and affirms syzygy, like a joyful wisdom.

Daumal writes that "'[p]ataphysical

IF

laughter[ . . . ]is the

one human expression of t h e identity of opposites," and "if

we ['Ipataphysicians often feel our l i m b s shaken by

laughter, it's the dreadful laughter from facing the clear

evidence[ . . . ]that al1 defined existence is a scandal"
(1995:28-29). Bosse-de-Nage, the laughing subhuman, is a
voice for such a syzygy.

H i s "tautological rnonosyllable,"

ha ha, is a laughtrack for the sophistry of diffgrance, the

limit between differing and deferring:

"the two A ' s differ

in space, when we write them, if n o t indeed in tirne, just as

two twins are never born together" (l965:228).
ltA juxtaposed to A , " but " A = A , "

Not simply

the syzygy of such a

guffaw is paradoxically both different and equivalent:

"[plronounced slowly, it is the idea of duality," but
"[pIronounced q u i c k l y [ . . . ]it is the idea of unity" (228).

Bosse-de-Nage responds to the absurd s y z y g y of p h y s i c s

in a universe of undecidable uncertainty:ll a f t e r all,
quantum theories of symmetricality and reversibility almost

seem to suggest that s u c h a reality tests our mundane wits

with its quantum puns.
a point or a field.

Each photon might be i n t e r p r e t e d as

Each e l e c t r o n moving forward through

81

t i m e might a l s o be i n t e r p r e t e d as a positron moving b a c k w a r d

through t i m e .

Does n o t Faustroll p r o p o s e a t h e o r y o f

g r a v i t y , i n w h i c h " t h e f a 1 1 o f a body t o w a r d s a c e n t e r " i s

t h e s a m e a s " t h e a s c e n s i o n o f a vacuum t o w a r d s a periphery"

(1965:193)? Does n o t Sengle s u g g e s t t h a t a n i n f i n i t e l y

s m o o t h s u r f a c e i s i n d i s t i n g u i s h a b l e from a n i n f i n i t e l y r o u g h
surface (1989:105)?

The s ~ z y ~ si i am p l y ensures t h a t s u c h

a m b i g u i t y i s p r e s e r v e d in a w o r l d where w e can no l o n g e r
d i s t i n g u i s h between r e a l i t y and i l l u s i o n .

Clinamen:

The P r i n c i p l e o f Deviance

C l i n a m e n i s t h e t h i r d declension o f e x c e p t i o n :
d e c l i n e of t h e s w e r v e .

Detouring around every other thing

i n a s y s t e m t h a t v a l u e s the f a t e o f c o n t r i v a n c e - - i t

the w i l l t o digress.

the

serves

J a r r y rnay b o r r o w t h i s n o t i o n f r o m a

c l a s s i c a l c o n t e x t ( t h e c l i n a m e n i n Lucretius, o r e v e n t h e

p a r e n k l i s i s i n E p i c u r u s ) , but such a p r i n c i p l e of deviance

a l s o p r o v i d e s a p r e t e x t for p o s t m o d e r n p h i l o s o p h y about t h e
theme of - m i s p r i s i o n ( f o r e x a m p l e , t h e dtournement i n
D e r r i d a o r t h e d e c l i n a t i o n i n Serres, e t c . ) - - v a g a r i e s

that

d i v e r g e f r o m w h a t directs them, escaping t h e events o f t h e

s y s t e m t h a t c o n t r o l s them.

The c l i n a m e n i s s i m p l y t h e

unimpeded part o f a f l o w w h i c h e n s u r e s t h a t such a f l o w h a s

no f a t e .

N o t u n l i k e t h e s p i r a l o f Ubu o r t h e v o r t e x of

82

Pound, such a swerve is the atomic glitch of a microcosmic

incertitude--the symbol for a vital poetic, gone awry.

L u c r e t i u s writes t h a t , "while the first bodies are

being carried downwards by their own weight in a straight

line through the void[

course" ( 113 )

...], they

swerve a little from their

for without this uncertain swerve in space

and time ( i n c e r t o tempore ferme incertisuue locis), "al1

would fa11 downwards like raindrops through the profound
v o i d , no collision would take p l a c e [ . . . ] :

never have produced anything" (113).

thus nature would

The clinamen involves

a brownian kinetics, whose decline d e f i e s inertia since s u c h

a swerve must i m p l y a change i n vector without a change in

force.

The clinamen represents the minimal obliquity within

a laminar trajectory.

The curve is a tangent to a d e s c e n t ,

but a tangent that defies al1 calculus since the curve is

itself a tangent composed of nothing but tangents

inf initum:

ad

the volute rhythm of a fractai contour.

L u c r e t i u s resorts to such a swerve in order to posit a

choice between what Serres regards as two genres of physics:

"Venus, that is to say, nature; o r Mars, that is to

nature" ( 1 9 8 2 : 9 8 ) .

sey,

Venus d e n o t e s the eroticism of a nomad

paralogy, the v o l u ~ t a sof a fluid dynamics ( f o l d and flow),

whereas Mars denotes t h e necrotism of a royal paradigm, t h e

voluntas of a solid mechanics (rank and file). l2

science

has usually adopted the latter p h y s i c s , 1 3 i n s o f a r as it

murders to d i s s e c t , declaring martial law on behalf of

whatever is repestable and there fore p r e d i c t a b l e - - t h e

f o e d e r i fati of a terroristic determinism.

D e r r i d a implies,

however, that the clinamen deflects this mandatory destiny

into an aleatory ecstasy:
principle[

...]would

l i b i d i n a l rebellion:

"[tlhe clinamen of the elementary

be the pleasure principle" (1984:8)--a

artfulness disrupting lawfulness.

Serres argues that, for such modern physics, "[tlhe

clinamen is a principal e l e m e n t o f homeorrhesis," not of
homeostasis (1982:119).

Atomic events do not

be

so much as

become:

their equilibrium does not repeat so much as

change.

Even though "the time of the clinamen is not

necessarily simultaneous with leaving the dead to bury the

dead" ( 9 9 ) , such a swerve does provide a nomad cognate to

the royal concept of e n t r o ~ ~be

, it in a flow of heat (as
defined by Boltzmann) or in a flow of data (as defined by
Shannon).

Just as Lucretius draws an analogy between atoms

( a t o m i c a ) and words (littera), arguing that both substance

and utterance r e s u l t from a random complex of combinations

and permutations ( 1 7 5 ) , so also does Serres draw an analogy
between thernionics and cybernetics, arguing that b o t h
sciences theorize the clinamen as either decay or noise.

84

Serres explains that, for Lucretius, any compound, be

it chemical or grammatic, results fram an aleatory act that

in turn mistakes i t s e l f post facto as the result of a

mandatory law:

f o r example, " [ t l h e alphabetical proto-cloud

is without law and the letters are s c a t t e r e d at random,

always there as a set i n space, as language; but as soon as

a text or speech appears, t h e laws of good formulation,
combination, and conjugation also appear" (1982:114).I4

No

lawfulness can exist without such repetition; however, the

clinamen s e r v e s to interject turbulence into the reprise of

such lawful c y c l e s i n order t o disrupt the flow of i n f l u e n c e

from cause to effect.

As

Derrida implies, such a s w e r v e

evokes t h e v e r y "atomssti~ueof the l e t t e r " ( 1984 : 10 )

its

portmanteau of quantum pulsion and lingual turmoil, both of

which are r a m i f i e d by poetry, if not unified by science.

McCaffery dramatizes such an atornystique by deploying

the c l i n a m e n as a semantic strategy in his esssy on t h e
'pataphysics of Zarathustra.

Just as Lucretius argues that

only the-clinamen of a minimal errancg d i v i d e s the fire

( i ~ n e s )from the firs ( l i ~ n a ) ,so also does McCaffery

transpose l e t t e r s , inserting them or replacing them, in

order to divert the flow of his t e x t with each t y p o .

The

i n c r e a s i n g frequency of s u c h miscreance eventually results

i n s d i s p l s y o f cacophasia so that, for example, the word

clinamen might become chinameq, cinnamen etc. ( 1 9 9 7 : 1 6 ) .

For Jarry, the wordplay of such deviance often takes the

form of the portmanteau (cornenidouille, palcontentes,

etc.)--words that do not abbreviate or congregate two
meanings so much as complicate their sequencing through an
act of misprision that parodies their linguistic precedents.

Bloom a r g u e s that, because s u c h misprision allows a

poet to evade influence and become anomalous, "the study of

Poetic Influence is necessarily a branch of 'Pataphysics"

(1973:42).

Influence is no longer an inter-reference, but

an interference, in which divertissement replaces

ressentiment.

Precedent norms no longer inhibit subsequent

forms s i n c e "the clinamen stems always from a 'Pataphysical

sense of the arbitraryN--the "equal baphazardness" of cause

and effect:

"'[p]ataphysics proves to be truly accurate; in

the world of poets al1 regularities are indeed 'regular

exceptions'; the recurrence of vision is itself a law
governing exceptions" (42).

What repeats is not a rule of

repetition and imitation, but a game of competition and

agitation, in which the clinamen is the smallest, possible
aberration that can make the greatest, potential difference.

The IrnaRinary Solution

'Pataphysics misreads metaphysics in order to disrupt

i t , c o n f u s e it, or def lect it, transposing the relationship
between a royal paradigm and a nomad p a r a l o g y , u n t i l such a

philosophy of exceptions g o e s e v e n so far as to misread

itself.

Subsequent 'pataphysicians (the Italian Futurists,

the French Oulipians , and t h e Canadian "Pataphysicians )

reinterpret their a n t e c e d e n t practitioners, misreading them

in order to avoid the normalization of such abnormalities.

Each predecessor is (mis)interpreted as a problem requiring

a solution.

A s Bloom observes, "[t]his

sense is not

reductive, for it is the continuum, the stationing context,

that is r e s e e n , and shaped i n t o t h e visionary; it is brought

u p to the intensity of t h e crucial objects, which then

'fade' into it" (42).

In

essence,

each solution is itself

the catalyst for a phantasm that in turn becomes a problem.

'Pataphysics may be a science of imaginary solutions,

but this- imaginariness does not e n t a i 1 i t s insignificance
because, as McCaffery argues:

"[tlhet the problem is a

pseudo-problem in no way nullifies the p u r s u i t of a solution

for t h e pursuit in itself will evince the problematic nature

of both 'problem' and tsolution'" (1986:189).

Deleuze

argues that a problem does not simply mean t h e f a i l u r e of a

87

theorem, whose ineptitude or incertitude can vanish through

cumulative knowledge; i n s t e a d , "[sjolutions are e n g e n d e r e d
st precisely the same time that the problem determines

itself" (1990:lZl).

Questions always define in advance the

regime o f t h e i r answers.

The problem always persists in the

very paradigm t h a t allows the solution to make s e n s e as a

solution.

No enigma Fs solved so well that its status as an

enigma ceases to exist.

A solution is infinitely imaginary,

'Pataphysics implies that a l 1 problems t h r e a t e n t o

operate a t t h e infinite disposa1 o f a futile inquest.

Baudrillard goes so far as to suggest that the o b j e c t (with

its fatal strategies of fascination) mey pose a problem
without solution for the subject (and its banal strategies

of explanetion) since a t t e m p t s by science t o r e n d e r reaiity

more explicable and controllable always threaten to render
reality even more inexplicable and uncontrollable (1988:89).
S c i e n c e gazes a t a crystal that promises to answer al1

questions, but that instead captures science with a demand

for even- more questions.

Like t h e e v i l genie feared by

Descartes or the free spirit loved by Nietzsche, the crystal

takes revenge upon the will to truth.

The subject tries to

solve the o b j e c t , but meanwbile t h e object t r i e s to dissolve

the subject, and ultimately the object always triumphs. i 5

88

'Pataphysics effectively reveals that this demand f o r

truth is only an imaginary solution to t h e deceit of such an
object.

Nietzsche asks:

"'Why do you not want to d e c e i v e ? '

especially if it should seem--and

aimed at[

282).

...]deception,

it does seem!--as if life

simulation, delusion" ( 1 9 7 4 : 2 8 1 -

Why believe in truth?

Why not believe in u n t r u t h ?

Why does belief in either case t a k e itself so seriously?

Why does belief in effect believe in itself?

W h y not move

from the deceit of t r u t h to the truth of deceit?

The

science of 'pataphysics suggests t h a t , without the mendacity

of poetry, what the veracity o f science reveals about t h e

borror vacui o f the universe, the fact that delusions are

i n t e g r a l t o a l 1 knowledge, must seem u t t e r l y nightmarish.

The value of poetry thus resides in its ability to play i n

t h i s void that the t r u t h of science must f i n d i n t h e r e a l .

Notes t o C h a ~ t e r2

l ~ i e t z s c h eaffirms that

thingl. ..]to admit[..,Jthat

"

[ i ] t is[

. ..]a d i f f i c u l t

the insect or the bird perceives

an entirely different world from the one thst man does, and

that the question of which o f t h e s e p e r c e p t i o n s o f t h e world

is the more c o r r e c t one i s q u i t e meaningless, for t h i s would

have t o have been decided p r e v i o u s l y i n accordance with the

criterion of the correct perception, which means, in
accordance with a criterion which is n o t available"

(1979:86).

No panoptic absolute provides a reliable

standard for the unremitting specificity of each truth.

'~arr~
like
,
Nietzsche, implies that truth is a
sacred pharos, whose foundation rests upon a l e g a c y of both

death and w a s t e , its faecal beacon attracting the b l i n d like

flies t o the snare o f i t s church--a

monument b u i l t upon the

corpse of a comatose c o l o s s u s who takes, as a l i m i t for al1

knowledge, only the point of his exhaustion ( 1 9 6 5 : 2 0 1 ) .
Truth is a phallic asylum for s u c h a lingual d e s p o t , insofar

as "ItJhis obeliscolychny [...]bas the form o f some g e s t u r e

o f command" (1989:96), consigning us to a sentence of

imprisonment, despite el1 pretense of enlightenment.

'~austroll provides a conceit for the poetic

wisdom in the alchemy of the lapis ~ h i l o s o ~ h o r u m dispelling

,
limits, not o n l y between t h e basic and the noble, but also
between the ontic and the semic--the
vates and the lapis:

very schism between the

"'1 could easily transmute a l 1 things,

for I also possess this stone' ( h e showed it ta me, s e t in

one of his rings), 'but I have found by experiment that the

benefit extends only t o t h o s e whose brain is that selfsame

stone' (through a watchglass embedded in the fontanel o f his

skull h e showed me the s t o n e a second time)" ( 1 9 6 5 : 2 3 6 ) .

' ~ a r rimplies
~
that, from the viewpoint of the
Ubermensch, evolution is a Sisypheen task not for a humanity
that must s o l v e the futile problems of the species, but for

the divinity that must imagine m o r e c l e v e r problems for t h e

species t o solve (1989:135-136).

Daumal even argues t h a t

s u c h natural selection is itself 'pataphysical, insofar as

it is tautological, stating that each form of l i f e exists as
i t is because, if i t were otherwise, i t could not e x i s t

(32)--or-as Fort avers, the only evidence for fitness is

survival itself:

"Darwinism:

That survivors survive" (24).

91

'~odern physics has already striven to address

such horror vacui by adopting an almost 'pataphgsical
countenance when discussing the relationship between
position and momentum.

At

an atomic scale, the measurement

of one value precludes concommitant knowledge about the

other value (such is the principle of uncertainty).

At the

cosmic scale, two measurements of one value may Vary if one

of the measurements occurs at an ultramassive position or at
a proxiluminal momentum (such is the principle of

relativityl.

The act of measuring is no longer reassuring.

'~ietzsche ironically formulates a rule about

rules--a rule that breaks its own rules, insofar as he
dramatizes the very induction that he chastizes.

Nietzsche

presents such a paradox in order to question the rules by

which rules can question, arguing that, despite s u c h a
paradox, science nevertheless settles for rules that are
more reactive than creative.

Science is a superstition that

vilifies theistic sentiment, but that nevertheless reifies

theistic-ressentiment, substituting a love of what is usual

(the banal), for a fear of what is unusual (the fatal).

' ~ o r t , 1 i k e Nietzsche, indulges i n skeptical

s o p h i s t r y , defining scientific anomalies in terms o f
recursive exclusion--a

paradox, i n which, f o r a thing to be

r e a l , i t must e x c i s e i t s e l f from a whole in order to evince

itself as the whole:

"nothing can attempt to b e , except by

attempting t o e x c l u d e something else" ( 7 ) .

Like Jarry, Fort

uses i r o n i c whimsy t o argue s o p h i s t i c a l l y t h a t , " i f al11

...]

existence p e r c e p t i b l e t o us is t h e product o f e x c l u s i o n ,
there i s n o t h i n g that i s perceptible t o u s t h a t really is"

(7).

A thing is only an effect o f p r e j u d i c i a l distinction.

b i s t e v a argues t h a t t h e s u b j e c t c o n f r o n t s
poetic anomaly in either one of two ways:

f i r s t , by

performing such fear (as Plato does), d e t a c h i n g oneself from

its cornpetitive p o t e n t i a l to pervert reason into unreason;

second, by reforming such fear (as Aristotle d o e s ) , engaging

o n e s e l f with i t s r e p e t i t i v e potential to convert unreason

into reason.

Aristotle c o n v i c t s anomaly in order to demand

i t s c o n t r i b u t i o n through the katharsis o f communication.

P l a t o ev-icts anomaly i n order to demand i t s retribution
through t h e pharmakos of excommunication (1982:16).

93

'~~otard
describes the turning-bar in a manner
that recalls the physick-stick, insofar as both types of
line-segment spin around their own a x i s according to a
non-Boolean logic in a non-Euclidean space--"a movement
yielding the following three properties:

the rotation takes

place on al1 the axes without exclusion, the central point

is itself displaced over the segment in an alestory way,

finally it is equally displaced in the supposed neutral
spacen and "[tlhus a surface is engendered, which is nothing

other than the labyrinthine libidinal band" (1993:15).

'O~aurnal argues that , " [ ' p l ataphysical laughter"

denotes an awareness of absurdist dualities--"it signifies
the subject's headlong rush toward its opposite o b j e c t and
at t h e same time the submission[...]to

that law of becoming

according to which laughter is begotten" (1995:28-29).

Sandomir argues:

As

"we inquire into laughter solely in terms

of s scientific explanation, and, what is more important, we

inquire into seriousness just as we inquire into
explanations--solely b e c a u s e seriousness and explanation
botb possess a ['lpataphysical stigma" (1960b:176).

8 os se-de-~a~e

utters a "tautological

monosyllable" (196) that resembles the phatic phrases of

Socratic dialogue, the interruption acting as a punctuating
gesture of both affirmation and confirmation:

"Bosse-de-

Nage was to[ . . . ]interrupt our conversation, where a pause

might be convenient, with his interjections" (199-200)--each

of which provides a laughtrack for the reader:

(196).

Bosse-de-Nage

"Ha ha"

in this respect resembles what Serres

might c a l l "the third position" (1982b:78), whose exclusion

provides the pretense for the continuation of communication.

l 2 ~ a r t i a nphysics defines a fluid force as the

exception to what Deleuze and Guattari call the Cornpars, a

quantal geometry of position--the monadic stomicum (1987:
369).

Venusian physics, however, defines a rigid mode1 as

the exception to what Deleuze and Guattari call the Dispars,

a f r a c t a l geometry of momentum--the nomadic clinarnen

(1987:370).

As McCaffery argues:

"[a]toms[...]

are m e t a -

sengsical olganizations of[ . . . ] p urwly imaained matrter,

[...]and

as such prlovyde a 'patarphynsicl solautiob to the

abysmaticx olf msterila division" (1997:13).

95

1 3 ~ e l e u z eand Guattari auggest that royal sciences

dismiss nomad sciences as "prescientific or parascientific

or subscientific" (1987:367), even though both sciences do

involve a kind of gnostic initiation, with their own rites

of passage, their own legacies of magic, both resorting to

imaginary s o l u t i o n s f o r customary problems.

Whereas royal

sciences involve p r o c e d u r e s of deduction, induction, and

reproduction, for the s a k e of a general certitude, nomad

sciences involve p r o c e d u r e s of abduction, seduction, and
transduction, for the sake of a special incertitude.

''serres argues that al1 laws f o r combining

(foedera coniunctorum) only arise after the fact of
combining (coniuncta foederum) so that , in ef fect , t h e
d e t e c t i o n of o r d e r is simply the hindsight of chaos:

"The

laws of nature corne from conjugation; there i s no nature but

that of compounds.

In the s a m e

way,

there are the laws of

putting together letters-atoms to produce a text.

laws, however, are only federation.

fact iteelf:

These

The law repeats the

while things are in the process of being

formed, the laws enunciate the federated." (1982:114)

'(~audrillard explains this idea by recount i n g a

'pataphysical tale, i n which a rat has conditioned a
scientist t o g i v e it food whenever the rat has completed an
e x p e r i m e n t a l task:

" [blased on tbis story you c o u l d

imagine, on the level of scientific observation, that t h e

e x p e r i m e n t would have been faked-not

involuntarily altered

by the o b s e r v e r , but faked by t h e o b j e c t , w i t h t h e purpose

of amusement or vengeance[...],

or b e t t e r y e t :

t h a t the

o b j e c t only pretends to obey the laws of physics because it

gives so much pleasure t o t h e o b s e r v e r t ' ( 1990 :8 4 - 8 5 )

Italian Futurism:

A 'Pataphvsics of Machinic Exception

"[~]utomatism always embodies an irrational

projection of consci~usness[..~.]~There is

a complete ['jpataphysics of the object

awaiting description here, a science of
imaginary technical solutions."

(Baudrillard 1 9 9 6 b A 1 3 )

" [Tlhe unforeseen beast Clinamen

e jaculated

ont0 the walls of its universe. t t

(Jarry 1965 :238 )

The Machinic Future of Poetrj

Italian Futurists present the f i r s t case for t h e

surrationalism of the 'pataphysical, revising the structure
of exception i n order to oppose the irrationalism of the

French Symbolists.

Futurism responds to the avant-garde

pseudo-science of Jarry by inflecting the machinic

intensities of technological forms, arguing that exception
results from the collision of machines.

For Marinetti,

Futurism begins accidentally with such a mechanical

catastrophe:

a carwreck that dramatizes the clinameq of a

swerve, complete with the anomalous intensity of its shock

(la scossa), its noise ( l e rumore), and its speed

velocitk).

(la

Such an e v e n t implies that, from any havoc

wreaked by technology, there appears a route charted for

aesthetics.

Such a 'pataphysical epistemology values the

uniqueness, if not the randomness, of surprise itaelf.

Marinetti aligns Futurism with the modern advent of a

cyborganic philosophy, in which an industry for hybridizing

the anthropic and the machinic might p a r a l l e l an artistry

for hybridizing the poetic and the noetic:

"[w]e

cooperate

with Mechanics in destroying the old poetry" (1991:75) since

"[wle want t o make literature out of the life of a motor"
(95)--"[t]o listen to motors and to reproduce t h e i r

conversation^'^ (96).

Futurism simply resorts to the

metaphor of t h e machine in order to depict metaphor as a

machine, arguing that, s i n c e

"

[nlothing is more beautiful

t h a n a great humming central electric station[.. . , ] panels

bristling with dials, keyboards, and shining commutators,"

literature must learn to embrace the novelty of s u c h
technological modernization:

"[tlhese panels are our only

models for the writing of poetry" (106).

Metaphor quite literally becomes a literary device, a

mechanical conveyance, whose meaning descends etymologically
(if not metaphorically) from the concept of vehicle (as the

99

Greek word, metapherein, "to transport," seems to s u g g e s t ) .

When Marinetti d a i m s that "a roaring car[

...]--is

more

beautiful than the Victors of Samothrace" ( 1 9 9 1 : 4 9 ) ,

he

begins to literalize this metaphorical equivalence between

the artiatry of a message and the industry of its transit. 1

If Futurism is the science that unleashes the accidental

potentials of such machinic novelty, does not Futurism
resemble the science by which Ubu might detonate his
mechanized automatons, the Palcontents?

1s it not possible

to say in the spirit of Jarry that "'[plataphysics

is the

science of t h e s e present or future beings and devices, along

with the power to use them" (1965:113)?

Futurism transforms 'pataphysics into an a ~ ~ l i e d

science, whose structure of exception has informed two kinds
of radical politics ( b e it Italian Fascism or Russian
Communism), both of which have responded poetically to the
machinery of industrial capitalism by trying to imagine a
revecsible transition from a poetrs about science to a
science of poetry.

This survey discusses such a sequence of

influence according to the metaphor of the accident, the

structure of an exception, in which the instruments of a
royal science are inadvertently set free by the experiments

of a nomad science (like the kind of extravagant speculation

seen later, for example, in the metamatics of T i n g u e l y or

the carcrashes of Ballard):

delirious machinery that

revises the anomalos, the s s e v ~ i a ,and the clinamen through

its own machinic paralogy of shock, noise, and speed.

Marinetti drives an automobile recklessly in order t o

declare that poetry must surrender itself to the Unknown:
" [ s u c h ] words were scarcely out of my mouth when 1 spun m y

car aroundl

...], and

t h e r e , suddenly, were two cyclists

coming toward me, shaking their fists, wobbling like two

equally convincing but nevertheless contradictory arguments"

(1991:48).

The cyclists pose a "stupid dilemma" ( 4 8 ) ,

requiring t h e motorist to swerve awey from them into a

ditch--an abject locale, where t h e poet i n euphoria
proclairns a manifesto in favour of such disasters.

The

carcrash provides an allegory for an exorbitant spectacle of

avoidance, in which every poetic device must act like an
updated machine ( a roadster) t h e t veers away from the

pass(ism-

of an outdated vehicle ( a bicycle):

''[ploetry must

be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces" ( 4 9 ) .

Marinetti i n v o k e s t h e tropes of Jarry in order to f u s e

science with poetry, but ironically enough, Jarry is himself
a notorious cyclist, who portrays a pair of supermen on

101
bicycles:

Christ racing uphill against a velocipede toward

a crucifixion ( 1 9 6 5 : 1 2 4 ) and Marceuil racing overland

against a locomotive toward an electrocution ( 1 9 6 4 : 7 9 ) .

Marinetti seems to swerve from the path of such cyclists, as

if to d e p l o y the 'pataphysics o f Jarry in order to parody

the 'pataphysics of Jarry.

Marinetti in effect dramatizes

the principle of Bloom that 'pataphysics is itself a science

of influence, insofar as Futurism must reverse the flou of

cause and effect, denouncing the nostalgia for a prototype

in order to replace it with the prognosis of an ectype.

An

antecedent device (the Futurist automobile) must evade the

obstacle of a precedent device (the Symbolist velocipede).

Burliuk has observed that, despite such antagonism,

"[elvery Symbolist has a Futurist tucked under his srrn"
(96)--particularly when we take into account that Jarry ( a
friend to Symbolists) does indeed inspire Marinetti ( a n
enemy to Symbolists).

Both Futurism and Symbolism do

criticize science 'pataphysically by proposing a

synaesthetic transvaluation of rationalism, but Marinetti
must, nevertheless, insist upon staging a duel (if not a
race) between Futurism and Symbolism, given that he plays a
game of c h i c k e n in order to see which artist, which driver,

first loses the nerve to enact a collision between two

different categories of vehicle that can convey poetic

102
tropes.

Marinetti values the sport o f such a c o n f l i c t , i n

w h i c h h i s respect for a ' p a t a p h y s i c a l p r e c u r s o r a t t h e same

t i m e c l a s h e s w i t h h i s disdain for a 'pataphysical p r e c u r s o r .

M a r i n e t t i p r o c l a i m s t h a t "[wle h a v e e v e n dreamed o f one

d a y being a b l e t o c r e a t e a m e c h a n i c a l son, t h e fruit of p u r e

will, a s y n t h e s i s of al1 t h e laws that s c i e n c e is on t h e

b r i n k of discovering"

(1991:83). Evoking t h e s t o r y o f

Frankenstein, i n w h i c h t h e c r e a t o r ( a prototype) and t h e

m o n s t e r ( a n ectype) transpose t h e i r r o l e s t h r o u g h a
p r e c e s s i o n of simulacra, F u t u r i s m strives t o imagine i t s own
b r a n d o f c e l i b a t e creation.

Whereas Jarry is p e r h a p s the

kind o f robot child t h a t M a r i n e t t i wishes to f a t h e r , Jarry

i s i n f a c t t h e father o f t h e r o b o t c h i l d t h a t M a r i n e t t i i s .
A s Jarry o b s e r v e s ,

" [ t l h e Machine i s b o r n o f t h e ashes of

the slave" ( 1965: 112 )

Like a d a n g e r o u s supplement t h a t

almost a n t i c i p a t e s the McLuhanite t h e o r y of auto-emendation

and a u t o - a m p u t a t i o n ,

a m a c h i n i c t o o l i n the f u t u r e augments,

then r e p l a c e s , a n a n t h r o p i c limb i n t h e p a s t .

M a r i n e t t i demands that t h i s h y b r i d device of m a c h i n i c

metaphors must f o r g e t h e i n d u s t r i e s of tomorrow i n o r d e r to

a b o l i s h t h e forgeries of y e s t e r d a y .

F u t u r i e m must p r a c t i c e

a " h y g i e n i c forgetfulness" (1991:105) that amounts to a

l i t e r a l breakins of records ( i n b o t h s e n s e s o f t h e t e r m ) ,

103
destroying not only standards for performance, but also

histories of performance, not only ascending past a limit

(with ever more e n e r g y ) , but also rescinding the limit that
is the past (with ever less rnemory).

Futurism disavows the

~assbisrnof an obsolete technique for the sake of a

synchronistic disappearance, advocating the destruction of
museums, for example, o n the assumption that they are

nothing more than the "absurd abattoirs of painters and

sculptors ferociously macerating each other with color-blows

and line-blows, the length of the fought-over walls" ( 49 )

Futurism in effect aspires to imitate the machinic

graffiti of Faustroll, who devastates a museum with "the
Painting Machine," a revolving gyroscope that whirls at
randorn through "the Palace of Machines," mechanically

vandalizing masterpieces:

"it dashed itself against the

pillars , swayed and veered in inf initely varied directions,

and followed its own whim in blowing ont0 the walls' canvas
the succession of primary colors ranged according to the

tubes of- its stomach" (1965:238).

The Painting Machine

(which actuslly bears the name Clinamen) prefigures the

'pataphysical technologies of Tinguely (particularly the
metamatic entitled Homaae to New York, a calliope for

painting pictures at random while destroying itself inside

the Museum of Modern Art).

Such a device swerves through a n

aesthetic tradition, wreaking havoc upon its artifacts.

Tinguely builds d e v i c e s t h a t fuse the detritus of both

artistry and industry into an assemblage of incompatible

accessories, al1 of which sabotage their own instrumentality

(as if to suggest that, like a 'pataphysical science, s u c h a

technological machine generates itself from excess debris
used, capriciously and incompatibly, to g e n e r a t e more excess

debris)

.'

What Tinguely regards as a " joyful" machine

(Hulten 56) is merely the product of what Nietzsche r e g a r d s

as a "joyful" science.

The machinic delirium of such

epistemic vandalism signifies a cornpetition between poetic

tropes that collide and collude in order to create the

clinamen of an artistic accident--an event that sets f r e e

each part of the device itself (including its user).

Tinguely might claim, s u c h a "machine is[

...]an

As

instrument

t h a t allows me t o be poetic" (Hulten 56).

Fascism Versus Communism

Shershenevich observes that "[tlhe Futurists do not

take you

%O,'

but tfrom"'

so that "the cannonball, once

fired, gets wild and d e s c r i b e s a curve ( e x c e s s e s [ . . . ] ) , " its

detours always leading away f rom the capitalist ic
philistinism of the bourgeoisie (153-154).

Whether Italian

or Russian, both pedigrees of Futurism have reacted

'pataphysically to the age of industrial automation by
divorcing the project of science from the program of
capital, doing so through the politics o f either Fascism o r
Communism ( e v e n though both of these political movements
have generally dismissed Futurisrn in favour of a bourgeois
aesthetic:

realism itself).

Like the Painting Machine,

Futurism unleashes uncontrollable potentialities, waging s

randorn battle, in which a subaltern science of experimental
reason subverts a dominant science of instrumental reason.

Careening through the archive of history, the c l i n a m e n

of 'pataphysics precipitates a cyclical reversa1 of

influence so that, as Khlebnikov might argue, "science is

now following the path that language has already taken"
(

378 )

Poetry inspires a scientif ic endeavour that poetry

in turn becomes.

Just a s Jarry inspires Marinetti (whose

poetry evades a French precursor), so also do the Italian

Futurists inspire the Russian Futurists (whose poetry evades
an Italian precursor); moreover, the Russian Futurists go on

t o inspire t h e Russian Formalists (whose science is based

upon a Futurist precursor), j u s t as the Russian Formalists
go on to inspire the French Structuralists (whose science i s
based upon a Formalist precursor).

For Futurism, these

ironic cycles of recursive influence merely comprise an

106
evasive history of warfare without any unilinear intention.

Marinetti c l a i m s that s u c h warfare is itself "Futurism

intensif ied" ( 1991 :131 )--perhaps

because (as Deleuze and

Guattari might suggest), war is the s u ~ ~ l e m e nof

t a marginal
episteme, occurring wherever a royal science clashes with a
nomad science ( 1 9 8 7 :355 ) :

the former, building implements

(which control energy through instrumental tasks); the

latter, building srmaments (which unleash energy through

experirnental risks)

.'

While Benjamin argues thst , for such

radical warfare, "alienation has reached such a d e g r e e that

it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic

pleasure" ( 2 4 2 ) , the very sesthetic that has served what he
vilifies ( F a s c i s r n ) has at the same time served what he
e n d o r s e s (Communism).

More hyperbolic than antonyrnic in its

logic, Futurism counteracts the atrocity of capitalist

automation with an even greater atrocity.

Heidegger observes thst the millenary problem of

technology, the danger of the Ge-stell ( 4 2 1 , always already
involves an imaginary solution throuah technology:

ie.

every problem implies a fatefl paradox, since the solution

to s u c h a problem ie itself a problem of the ~ r o b l e m . ' The

potential for a transition from danger to safety stems from

the insight of a clinamen, a turning away that is itself an

Einkehr an "in-turning," if not an Einblitz, an "inflashing" (41):

"[plerhaps we stand already in the shadow

cast ahead by the a d v e n t of this turningW--"[wJhen and hou

it [cornes] to pass a f t e r the manner of a destining no one
knows" (41) because

"

[tlhe turning of the danger cornes to

pass suddenly" (44)--as if by accident.

'Pataphysics

studies the exception of such accidents (in order to t r a f f i c

in the secret order of their conceits).

'Pataphysics regards the insight, the Einblitz, of such

accidents as a collision between two alien orders that

compare tbeir disparate events and exchange their desperate
images in a mutual clash of misprision.

For Marinetti, the

accident of s u c h a clinamen becomes a dynamic synonym for an

epiphany, an Einkehr, that contributes to the cataclysm of a
self-propelled self--the automobilitv, not only of a device,

but also of i t s driver.

For Marinetti, the carcrash t h a t

gives birth t o Futurism merely enacts the anomalous

intensity of such an insight by providing the basis in t h e

future f e r an imaginary philosopby of 'pataphysical

speculations.

As Deleuze and Guattari suggest, "there are

itinerant, ambulant sciences that consist in followina a

flou in a vectorial field across which sin~ularitiesare

scattered like so manv 'accidents' (problems)" (1987:372).

Paradigms in Collision

B a l l a r d has, of course, extended this 'pataphysical

speculation of Marinetti to its most baroque extreme by

imagining a future science, in which automobile collisions
can reveal a portent about the exceptional spontaneity of
o b j e c t s themselves.

Dissecting accidents with the p r e c i s i o n

of a scientist, Ballard stages an "atrocity exhibition" ( 9 ) ,

in which a car, like the vehicle of metaphor itself, becomes

aesthetic only when it is also ballistic.'

Its f u n c t i a n

a l o n g a route (as a mode of transportation) must succumb to

a dysfunction along a d e t o u r ( a s a mode o f transformation).

For Baudrillard, such a vehicle travels "a path leading more
quickly than the main rosd, o r leading where the main road
does not l e a d or, better yet, and to parody ~ i t t r gin a
['lpataphysical mode, 'a path l e a d i n g nowhere, but leading

there faster than the others"'

(1994b:118).

Baudrillard o b s e r v e s that, f o r Ballard, "the Accident

is everywhere" since "[ilt is no longer the exception t o a

triumphal rationality, it has become the Rule, it has

devoured the Rulew--"[i]t is no longer even the taccursed
share,' the one conceded to destiny by the system i t s e l f " ;
instead, "[elverything i s reversed" (1994b:113).

The

accident reveals a 'pataphysical promiscuity between

109
uncorrelated occurrences--their ability to collide on a whim
into a potential infinity of exceptional permutations:
"[ilt is the Accident that gives form to life, it is the
Accident[ . . . ]that is the sex of l i f e " ( 1 1 3 ) .
is "[tlhe only strategy[

...]o f

T h e accident

[']pataphysics[ . . . ] ; that is,

a science-fiction of the system's

reversal against itself at

the extreme limit of simulation, a reversible simulation in

a hyperlogic of death and destruction" (1993a:4-5).

Ballard has implied that, for Jarry, such collisions

almost reveal an economy of coincidental synchronicity where
unrelated incidents relate to each other as i f in a poetic
milieu:

for example, "Christ's crucifixion could be

regarded as the first traffic accident-certainly

if we

accept Jarry's happy piece of anti-clericalism" (1990:25).

Jarry compares the golgotha (with its stations of the

crucifix) to a velodrome (with its pitstops for a bicycle),
subjecting the story of Christ to a clinamen, equating the
crucifixion with a "deplorable accident" in a bikerace
(1965:124), just as Ballard subjects this story by Jarry to

a clinameq, equating the assassination of Kennedy with a

"deplorable incident" in an autorace ( 1990 :108 )

.'

Indeed,

the very correlation between these two writers almost seems

to dramatize their thematization of accidental coincidence.

110
Jarry and Ballard in both cases depict a statesman's

death as a sportsman's event, insofar as a vehicular

collision occurs, not only between two racers on a course,

but also between two genres of speech, if not between two
e ~ o c h sof poetry.

Like Jarry, Ballard tells a 'pataphysical

story t h a t swerves away from a metaphysicsl history, but

like Marinetti, Ballard also tells a 'pataphysical story

that swerves away from a 'pataphysical history.

Both kinds

of swerve i n v o l v e t h e sudden excursion away from the

influential through an execution of the influentiab-the

regicide, so to speak, of either a messiah or a monarch.

What Futurism regards as the hygiene of warfare refers t o

this conflict in the anxiety of influence, a conflict in

which t h e poet stages a militant accident, pitting one

technique, one "technology," a g a i n s t another.

Futurism resorts to the clinamen of such a c c i d e n t s 1

collisions in order to divert the anxiety of influence into
the ecstasy of exception,

Such a clinameq transforms the

Oedipal metaphysics of ressentiment into the non-Oedipal

'pataphysics of divertissement.

The Oedipal subject is

a t o m i z e d and dispersed i n a traject r a t h e r than localized

and c o a l e s c e d around an object.

The royal monument of the

ego merges with the nomad movement of a car so that, in

effect, t h e auto of t h e s e l f i s p r o p e l l e d into its o w n

111
drives.

The clinamen of this subjective dispersion evokes a

cyborganic schizonoia7--what Marinetti might cal1

fisicofollia, o r "body-madness" (1991:128), the ecstasy of a

'pataphysicisn, for whom " [tlhis new drama of Futurist
surprise and geometric splendor is a thousand times more

interesting[

. . . ) than human

psychology" ( 106 )

Marinetti equates the force of i n d u s t r i a l automation

with t h e v i o l e n t desires o f the unconscious i t s e l f - - t h e

ecstasy of a machinic accident that has corne to dramatize
t h e s v z v ~ i aof both the erotic and the necrotic:

"motors,

they ssy, are truly mysterious" for "[tlhey have whims,

freakish impulses" (1991:99), expressing the kind of

libidinal intensity seen, for example, i n the autoerotic

accidents described by Ballard.

Futurism imagines an

impossible technology, i n which every device i s a sex-toy

t h a t can destroy thought itself (not unlike les machines

malthusiennes of Jarry or les machines cglibataires of

Duchamp).

What such

' pataph~sicianshave

called "bachelor

machines-," Deleuze and Guattari have called "desiring-

machines" (1983:l)--deviant devices, whose e x t r a v a g a n c e

evokes al1 t h e ecstatic tortures of s h o c k , noise, and speed.

The Shock of Exception

Carrouges suggests that "[al bachelor machine is first

of al1 an improbable machine" (1975:21), an apparatus of
anomalies:

"felvery bachelor machine i s first of al1 a

['Ipataphysical machine, or a patamachine" (44).

Such an

apparatus does not repeat any mode1 of the erotic in which

the erotic becomes a means to repeat:

"the bachelor machine

is the erotic form of malthusianism" insofar as the device

perverts the values of functional repetition, opposing al1
forms of love that provide a n alibi for replicative
engineering.

Whether electric or artistic, the shock

scossa) generated by such

(la

device short-circuits the laws

that forbid perpetual motion and libidinal action.

The

bachelor machines inflict the shock of a nomad science upon

the mastery of devices:

the royal mandate, not only to

construct a machine, but also to determine its purpose.

Duchamp has, of course, provided the seminal pretext

for such a machine in his v i t r e a l diptych, The Bride

S t r i p ~ e dBare BY Her Bachelors. Even--a window, through

which voyeurs might witness a saderotic collision, postponed
in the hyperspace of an alternate dimension:

the upper

panel depicting the Bride (built rom Draft Pistons fuelled

b y the combustion of an ecstatic gasoline); the lower panel

113
depicting the Bachelors (built from Malic Moulds attached to
an array of diverse devices:

a Water Wheel, a Chocolate

Grinder, a Butterfly Pump, etc.).

Jerry-rigged from Jarry-

rigged ideas, this blueprint of schizoid gadgetry dramatizes

the shock of coincidental correlations (the clinsmen of

which is only highlighted by the fact that the glass itself

has since become riven with cracks--the result of a jolt
suffered during vehicular transport).

Anastasi suggests that Duchamp uses this machine to

perform a clinamen upon the devices of Jarry.

Just as Jarry

deploys the electric-chair of The Supermale in order to

imagine a pseudo-science of perpetual motion, so also does

Duchamp resort t o the electric-motor of The B a c h e l o r s in
order t o imagine a pseudo-science of libidinal action--the
as i f of what Duchamp might cal1 a science of h s ~ o ~ h v s i c s

(Anastasi 8 8 ) .

Such a science permits Duchamp to regard

each of his own impossible hypotheses as an, otherwise

imaginable, condition that has merely become detached from

the alternate dimension of its own possibility:

" 1 was

interested in introducing [into rny work] the

precise[...Jaspect

of science," but "[ijt wasn't

for love of

science that 1 did this; on the contrary, it was rather in

order to discredit it, mildly, l i g h t l y , unimportantly" ( 39).

114
Carrouges has suggested that such a science plots the
fantastic inversion of an Oedipal dynamic, s i n c e the B r i d e ,
not the Bachelor, a c t s as a saderotic superego that tortures
a masochist id ( 1 9 5 4 : 4 5 ) ; however, Szeemann o b s e r v e s that
" t h e Bachelor Machiner.

. . ]as

suggested by Carrouges [ has] in

part been vehemently rejected by the 'pataphysicians on

account of t h e 'upper inscription' which exerts an influence
on the Bachelors and determines their f a t e " (11).

Carrouges

still deploys an Oedipal paradigm to describe what Deleuze

and Guattari insist is an non-Oedipal artifice:

"[a]

genuine consummation is achieved by t h e new machine, a

pleasure that can be rightly called autoerotic, o r r a t h e r

automatic:
birth[

.. . ] ,

the nuptial celebration of a new alliance, a new

a s though t h e eroticism of the machine liberated

other unlimited forces" (1983:18).8

Bachelor machines amplify la scossa of sensation to a

nullpoint of synaesthetic indifference where any hierarchy

of experience, be it torture or ecstasy, disappears

altogether, giving rise instead to an infinitive series of
positive traits that never express a definitive system with
negative values.

Machines with such freedom never have to

prove t h e i r ability, since t h e y fulfill no real purpose, no

t r u e command,

F o r this reason, Brock suggests that such

'pataphysial instruments constitute the machinic solution to

115

a chimeric problem:

they are "mental machines the imaginary

working of which s u f f i c e s to produce a real movement of the

mind" ( 44 ) , and

" [ t ] O operate the world of Bachelor Machines

means taking the world only as we perceive it" (81),

regarding reality, not as a metsphysical substance, but as a
'pataphysical superf ice:

a ( d i s)simulation.

Certeau suggests that, within such a paralogy, bachelor

machines perform their ecstatic tortures not upon a victim
so much as upon a medium, the shocking violence acted out
not semantically beyond language, but syntactically within
language (88)--against the very machinery of language,

challenging the productive capacity of this machine to

displey the world of the as is, while emphasizing the
seductive capacity of this machine to invent a world of the
as if.

Lyotard makes a similar argument when he claims that

the bachelor machine inhabits an imaginary dimension of

dissimulating machinations, providing the basis for a

sophistic alternate to metaphysics itself:

"we have to

choose which camp to be in, as did[...]Jarry[.,,]and

Nietzsche:

the Sophists against the Philosophers, [,..]the

Bachelor machines against industrial mechanics" ( 1 9 9 0 : 4 9 ) .

Lyotard argues that such a d e v i c e does not exploit

nature through a use (as gadgetry d o e s ) nor does such a

116
device destroy nature through a war (as weaponry does);
instead, s u c h a device entraps nature through an art--the
deception of simulation:

"it plays a trick on these forces,

being itself less strong than they are, and making real this

monstrosity:

that the less strong [must] be stronger than

what is stronger" (l990:42).

The word "machine," in fact,

stems from the Latin word machina, meaning "trickeryl'--a

device to deceive, as if the machine reveals that, for the
as if, al1 orders are invertible and a l 1 series are

reversible:

" [ t ]O every discourse there must be another

opposing it in a rigourously parallel manner, but leading to

the opposite conclusion:
making these[

sophistics is a b o v e al1 the art of

... ] duplicitous

speeches, dissoi logoi" (47).9

Marinetti demands that such a poetic wisdorn create the

kind of "matter whose essence must be grasped b y strokes of

intuition, the kind of thing that the physicists and
chemists can n e v e r do" (1991:95) b e c a u s e , "[dlespite the
most skillful deformations, the syntactic sentence always
contains-a scientificl ...]p erspective absolutely contrary to
the[

. . . jemotional

perspective" ( I O 8 ) .

Science has often

resorted to a grammatical rationality, in which the

literary-line of poetry must become the assembly-line of
science, but Futurism renounces this linear syntax for the
sake of a "freespeechl' (la parole in liberttk) that no longer

serves this industrial mechanics.

Such an imagination

without puppetstrings (l'immaginazione senza fili) no longer

follows the "wire" of syntax, but instead mimicks the noise

of radiostatic as transmitted by a haywired wireless.

The Noise of Exception

Deleuze and Guattari argue that, because "[dlesiringmachines work only when they break down, and by continually

breaking down" (1983:8), such machines always constitute a

system of interruptions, in which every component behaves

like a clinamen:

"[ejvery machine functions as a break in

the flow in relation to the machine to which it is

connected, but at the s a m e time is also a flow itself[

. . . ]in

relation to the machine connected to it" (36). What Deleuze

and Guattari define in terms of mechanical disruption,
Serres might define in terrns of a cyborganic parasitism,
s i n c e both concepts signify a "noisiness," whose interferent

perturbance, not only subverts the redundancy, but also

enriches-the complexity, of any system (be it the mathetic

codes of cornputers, the semiotic codes of societies, or even

the biologic codes of lifeforms). 1O

Serres deploys such tropes in his own effort to insist

that, ultimately, "[nloise is the basic element of the

118
software of al1 our logic" (1995:7).

Noise is intrinsic to

every system that regards it as extrinsic to its own system:

in other words, "science is its own noise with itself, it
produces its noise from itself" (136), doing so until it

cannot hear its own noise, let alone its own words, because

of al1 the noise that it makes through the controversies of

its contradiction:

"noise[ . . . ]is at the boundaries of

physics, and physics is bathed in it" (13-14).

Noise

p r o v i d e s a metaphor for the as if of a l 1 that is possible,

yet unthought.

It denotes the Traumwelt of a ( ~ a r a k i t e - - a

marginal location where a nomad science attacks a royal

science:

there, a machinic praxis always arises, as if by

chance, from a machinic parapraxis.

Futurism values s u c h mechanized parasitism, insofar as

Marinetti argues that, just as "[m]icrobes[

...]are

essential

to the health of the intestines," so also is there "a

microbe essential to the vitality of art" (1991:97).

Futurism equates this microbe with the parasite of a

clinamen--the

' pataphysical

turbulence of noise ( le rumore).

Unlike 'metaphysics, which values music, not noise, in the

syntax of reason, 'pataphysics inverts this system of

values, equating le rurnore with the novelty of snomalyhence, we see the use of onomatopoeia in the poetry of
Marinetti, who mimics the kind of symphonic cacophony that

Russolo, the Futurist composer, evokes with his own

intonarumori:

"machines create today such a large number of

varied noises that pure sound, with its littleness and its
monotony, now fails to arouse any emotion" ( 5 )

Marinetti thus attempts to arouse such emotion with an

automated invective that abolishes standard grsmmar in order
to evoke the "zang-tuuum tuuumb orchestra of the noises of
wsr swelling with anger under a note of silence" (1987:79).
Just as Marinetti privileges telegrammatic abbreviations

enhanced by such sound-effects as "2000 steam pregnancies

tata~loomploom flac flac" ( 1987: 63),11 so also does Russolo
replace the antiquated repertoire of symphonic sonograms

with "the rumblings and rsttlings of engines breathingt

...],

t h e rising and falling of pistons, the stridency of

mechanical saws" (8).

Such noise is more surrational than

irrational, providing the basis for what Khlebnikov might

cal1 the zaum of a "transrational" language (the z a u m n ~ i

iazsk)--not nonsense, but " beyonsensef1--a "language si tuated

beyond the boundaries of ordinary reason" (383).

Khlebnikov suggests that, for science, the noisiness of

zaum can no longer be dismissed as an exceptional

irrelevance:

"[tJhe plenitude of language must be analyzed

in terms of fundamental units of 'alphabetic verities,' and

120

t h e n for these sound elements we may be able to construct

something resembling ~endeleev's law or Moseley's law--the
l a t e s t achievements of the science of chemistry" (376).
L i k e the rumore o f Italian Futurism, the zaum of Russian

Futurism not only attempts to disrupt the basis for a royal

science of the past, but also attempts to provide the basis
for a nomad science of the future.

Zaum in effect attempts

to transmit the noise, le rumore, of the bachelor machines

in order to produce a concomitant 'pataphysics for such

linguistic technology.

What is noise in the paradigm of

nostalgia is music in the paralogy of prognosis.

Tynyanov observes that the zaum of Russian Futurists

might provide the poetic foundation for the noetic

e n t e r p r i s e of the Russian Formalists (who resort to such

poetry for e x a m p l e s of concepts that science might deploy in

the study of poetry itself) (153).

Formalism almost verges

upon the 'pataphysical insofar as its scientif ic evaluation

of poetry privileges the novelty of anomaly--the surprising
noises in the alienation effect of ostranenie.

Like

Futurism, such Formalism tries to use the language of

scientific rnethodology in order to examine the neglected
machinery of language itself, not the word as sign, but the
word as such ( s l o v o kak takavoe). Such a machine embodies a
'pataphysical retroversion that does not simply use its

121
devices to convey a narrative meaning, but uses s u c h meaning
as an excuse to deploy innovative d e v i c e s .

Tynyanov almost appears to advocate a 'pataphysical

literariness when he suggests that, "if new phenomena are to
emerge in literature, what is needed is relentless
intellectual activity, and belief in it, together with the
scientific processing of material-even
unacceptable to science" (153).

if such work is

Tynyanov observes, for

example, that Khlebnikov often resorts to the clinamen of a

scientific misprision in order to generate the novelty of
poeticized exceptions:

"[ploetry is close to science in its

methods--this is what Khlebnikov teaches" (153)--"[m]inor

mistakes, 'chance features,' explained by the old academics
as a deviation caused by incomplete experimentation, serve
as a catalyst for new discoveries:

what was explained by

'incomplete experimentation' turns out to be the action of

unknown lawstl( 150 )

Tynyanov implies that "[ploetry must be as open as

science is in facing phenomena" so that "when it cornes
across a 'chance feature,' it must reorganise itself so that
the chance feature ceases to be chance" ( 1 5 4 ) .
also argues that

"

Khlebnikov

[a] misprint, born involuntarily frorn the

typesetter's will, suddenly gives meaning to a new entity;

122
it is one of the forms of collective creativity and may t h u s
be hailed as a desirable assistance to the artist" (381-

382).

Such a clinamen draws attention to the material

nature of a semantic medium, revealing, for example, a

'pataphysical resemblance between syntax and optics, the

l e t t e r Z depicting "the equality of the angle of incidence
t o the angle of reflection" (338)--almost as if the clinamen
is itself a flash of deviant insight, whose tropes of

deflection and refraction take place at the speed of light.

The Speed of Exception

Baudrillard observes that, for 'pataphysics, history

escapes from the gravity of the real in order to experience

what Virilio might cal1 "dromomania" (4)--the ecstatic

velocity of simulation.

Marinetti dramatizes such a

millenial principle of ' p a t a p h y s i c s , insofar as he exalts

la

velocitk of the clinamen and the highspeed collision of its

bachelor machines:

"[olne m u s t kneel before the whirling

speed of- a gyroscope c o m p a s s :

2 0 , 0 0 0 revolutions per

minute" (1991:104); "[olne must snatch from the stars the

secret [that might] let us match their speeds to escape from
a greeter star or to strike a smaller one" (104). The

rotary engine of such a p e r ~ e t u u mmobile c a l l s to mind the

physick-stick in Jarry or the turning-bar in Lyotard-

123
devices t h a t promise to break the second leu of thermodynamics through an infinitized expenditure of energy.

12

Jarry deploys the trope of s u c h a pervetuum mobile in

order to depict the allegorical competition between two
genres of dromomanic technology:
express-train--the

a bicycle-tesm

and an

former representing the a r t of what Jarry

might c a l l "old cyclophile hagiographers" (1965:123); the

l a t t e r representing the art of what Marinetti might c a l l

"the great Futurist Railroad' (1991: 5 5 ) ,

s u c h a race

demonstrates the efficacy of Perpetual Motion Food, "a fuel

for t h e human machine that [might] indefinitely delay[ . . . ]
nervous fatigue, repairing it as it is s p e n t " ( 1 9 6 4 : 4 ) .
S u c h a race provides an allegory for the triumph o f science

over its own entropic necrosis.

Just as the cyclist, who is

a cadaver, c a n nevertheless pedal faster than e v e r , d e s p i t e

having expired, so also d o e s science represent a vertiginous

expenditure that thrives paradoxically upon its own decline.

Jarry and Marinetti equate the as if of such a

dromomanic technology with a scientific revolution, whose
history defies the royal order of causality i t s e l f .

Inspired by Wells, for example, Jarry describes "[a] Machine

to isolete us from Duration" (1965:115)--a time-machine,

whose three gyrostats rotate so fast that they immobilize

124
the mechanism in the hyperspace of an alternate dimension.
While Jarry may indulge in ' p a t a p h y s i c a l speculations about
t h e manufacture of such a bachelor machine, the device c a n

exist only i n the i n t e r z o n e o f a surrational imagination.

Such a device s t r i v e s to p r o v i d e irnaginary solutions to its

own problematic temporality.

Just as Cubism depicts objects

from several p o s i t i o n s at once i n order to defy the limits

of space, so also d o e s Futurism imagine objects from several

momentums a t once i n order to defy t h e l i m i t s of time.

Wells observes that " [ w l e cannot[

...]appreciate

this

machine, any more than we c a n the spoke of a wheel spinning,

o r a b u l l e t f l y i n g t h r o u g h the air," for " f i I f i t i s
t r a v e l l i n g through tirne[

.. .] a

hundred times faster than we

are, i f it gets through a minute while we get through a

second, the impression it creates [must] of course b e
only[..,]one-hundredth

of w h a t it[ . . . ]make[sJ if it [is] not

t r a v e l l i n g i n tirne" ( 3 6 - 3 7 )

The time-machine reduces

history itself t o a state o f synchronistic disappearance (as

if to suggest that, because kinesic realism relies upon
periodic l a p s e s of attention at a constant speed of
movement, the world of existence arises only from our own
persistence of vision).

The time-machine almost resembles a

film-machine, insofar as both kinds o f d e v i c e can d e p i c t

plural instants of motion within a single p i c t u r e of events.

Marinetti recognizes t h a t the dromomania of such

cinematic machinery can provide Futurism with "a prodigious
sense of simultaneity and omnipresence" (1991:138).

Cinema

t h u s becomes the most poetically privileged genre of speed.

Like Balla and carr, whose Futurist paintings almost

resemble the chronophotogrsphy of Jules-Marey, Marinetti
attempts to transform a diachronic sequence into a
synchronic continuum, breaking the filmic s y n t a x of a
s e r i e s , in order to perform the linguistic equivalent of a

jump-cut o r a s t o p - t r i c k

(as if l a velocitk itself c a n

dematerialize the diarnetry o f reality, producing the ef fect

of the svzsaia, the plus-sign and the minus-sign blurring
t o g e t h e r in the gyroscopic revolution of its physick-stick):

this is hou we decompose and recomPose the universe

accordina to our marvellous whims ( 1 4 2 ) . 13

Marinetti suggests that to be fast results in the

"intuitive synthesis" of rectilinear forms (the prognosis of
straight lines), whereas to be slow results in the "rational
analysis" of curvilinear forms (the nostalgia of undulant
lines) (1991:103).

Blind to the fractals of tomorrow,

Marinetti aligns the futurity of velocity with a royal genre

of mathesis:

he does not see that, while t h e extremes of

velocitk may permit the future to outrace the past, such

speed always risks the accident of a clinameq, in which a

126
forward v e c t o r s w e r v e s i n t o a backward v o r t e x ( p a r t i c u l a r l y
when w e consider t h a t ,

f o r q u a n t u m p h y s i c s , e v e n maximized

speeds p r o m i s e t o d i v e r g e i n t o a n i n v o l u t e d t h e o r y ) .

If one

t r a v e l s v e r y fast ( b u t n o t a b o v e t h e l i m i t o f l i g h t ) , one
t r a v e l s i n t o t h e f u t u r e , but i f o n e t r a v e l s e v e n f a s t e r
(

bevond t h e l i m i t o f l i g h t )

o n e t r a v e l s into t h e p a s t .

Jarry a r g u e s t h a t s u c h t i m e - t r a v e l
t h e s u r r e a l i t y o f t h e as i f :

occurs o n l y w i t h i n

" t h e M a c h i n e can r e a c h t h e

r e a l P a s t o n l y a f t e r h a v i n g passed t h r o u g h t h e F u t u r e " s i n c e
" i t must go t h r o u g h a p o i n t s y m m e t r i c a l t o o u r P r e s e n t , a

d e a d c e n t e r b e t w e e n f u t u r e a n d p a s t , a n d w h i c h can b e
d e s i g n a t e d p r e c i s e l y a s t h e I m a b i n a r ~P r e s e n t "

(1965:121).

T h e M a c h i n e has two pasts, n o t o n l y t h e o n e p r e c e d i n g i t s

i n v e n t i o n , b u t also t h e one p r e c e d i n g i t s o p e r a t i o n - - w h i c h
i s t o s a y , " t h e p a s t c r e a t e d by t h e M a c h i n e when i t r e t u r n s

t o o u r P r e s e n t a n d w h i c h is i n e f f e c t t h e r e v e r s i b i l i t y o f
the F u t u r e " ( 1 2 1 )

The " F u t u r i s m t f of s u c h ' p a t a p h y s i c s

o p e r a t e s p a r a d o x i c a l l y i n the tense o f the p o s t modo, the

F u t u r i s t - m o v i n g forward, f o r g e t t i n g t h e past, only by moving

b a c k w a r d , r e v i s i t i n g t h e past, as i f "[dluration i s t h e
t r a n f o r m a t i o n o f a s u c c e s s i o n i n t o a reversion" (121).

B a u d r i l l a r d s u g g e s t s that, " [wlhen l i g h t i s c a p t u r e d

a n d s w a l l o w e d by i t s own s o u r c e , t h e r e is t h e n a b r u t a l

127
involution of time into the event i t s e l f f f (1990:17).

Such a

singularity constitutes a "[clatastrophe in the l i t e r a l

sense:

the[

in one[...],

...]curve

that has its origin and end coincide

yielding to an event without precedent and

without consequences--[a] pure event," one whose r e a l i t y

disappears through a simulacre1 precession (1990:17).
'Pataphysics s u g g e s t s that

this:

" [slpeed itself is doubtless only

throughout and beyond al1 technology, the temptation

for things and people to go faster than their cause, to

thereby c a t c h up to their beginning and annul it" (162).
Futurism is thus the effect of a paradoxical temporality, in

which Marinetti reverses his relation to Jarry so that

'pataphysics might originate in the future, not in the past.

The Chimeric Science of the F u t u r e

Futurism almost begins to propose for poetry the same

'

kind of molecular revolution that Deleuze and Guattari later

propose for science.

Marinetti imagines a machinic paralogy

that examines the unique specificity of matter and the

absurd singularity of its events without resorting to
anthropic prejudice:

" [ b l e careful not to force human

feelings ont0 m a t t e r " ; instead, "divine its dif ferent

governing impulses, its forces of compression, dilation,

cohesion, and disaggregation, its crowds of massed molecules

128
and whirling electrons"; after all, ltwe are not interested

in offering dramas o f humsnized matter" (1991:95).l'

For

such a dehumanized sensibility, the cyborganism of

'pataphysics must play itself out both peneticallv and
genericallv so that any h y b r i d of t h e anthropic and the
machinic parallels the hybrid of the poetic and the noetic.

Marinetti argues that "a strip of steel interests us

for itself; that is, the[. ..]nonhuman alliance of its
molecules or its electrons" (1991:95), and thus, "[tlo the
conception of the imperishablel

...], we

oppose, in a r t , that

of[ . . . ]the perishable, the transitory" ( 7 5 ) since "matter

has an admirable continuity of impulse toward[...]greater
movement, a greater s u b d i v i s i o n of itself" ( 5 ) . I5

Futurism

subscribes to an atomist dynamic of becoming, in which the

machine does not represent the universe as a mechanismic
assembly-line of causes and effects (each event, a reprise

in the plan of its e n g i n e e r ) ; instead, such a machine

represents the u n i v e r s e as a cyborganismic fracture-plane of

forces and energy (each event, a surprise to the bias of its

passenger).

The u n i v e r s e is simply a celibste creation for

finding out what happens next:

it is a surprise-machine.

Marinetti hopes to evoke a molecular revolution that

might take the 'pataphysical epistemology o f Jarry by

surprise, augmenting its declensions of exception through

the machinic paralogy of shock, noise, and speed.

Marinetti

resorts to 'pataphysics in order to revise 'pataphysics,

doing so in order to imagine the as if of s future in which
poetry can instigate a science, whose "lyric equations"

(1991:lll) might in turn explain poetry itself.

The Italian

Futurists are among the first to posit such a grammatical

algebra, just as the French Oulipians later posit their own
procedural calculus, but whereas the Italian 'pataphysicians
do so by referring to the hardware of a technological form
(ie. the play of concrete machines), the French

'pataphysicians do s o by referring to the software of a

numerological form (ie. the play of abstract machines).

Futurism ultimately postulates an applied science of

poetic theories, in which poetry itself is an accidental
instrument for a scientific experiment.

Rossiyansky

observes that, in ef fect, Futurism dreams of "a future

era[

...]where

scientific laboratories are run by astrologers

and chiromantists" (143)--'pataphysical sophisters that

parody metaphysical physicists.

Graal-Arelsky observes in

turn that, for Futurism, "[slcience turns out to be

relative, like everything else" since "[tlhe world which

r u l e s in our intellect is not real, but imaginary" (Ill),

emerging, in effect, from our own 'pataphysical

130
perspect ivism.

Such an avant-garde pseudo-SC i e n c e reveal s

that the Future is nothing more than a poetic notion t h a t

p r o v i d e s an absurd domain for t h e epistemic fantasies of

'pataphysics:

the as if of its o w n science-fiction.

Notes to Chapter 3

l ~ e t a m a t i c sb u i l t by Tinguely do not embody the

disciplinary model of Henry Ford (in which a machine merely

enacts an efficient, predictable s e r i e s of command), but the
undisciplinary model of Rube Goldberg ( in which a machine
enacts an inefficient, unpredictable chance for freedom).
Metamatics simply dramatize a principle of uncertainty, as

i f to demonstrate that (despite Newton and Laplace) the

universe itself does not run as a clockwork mechanism, but
perhaps resembles a mechanized assemblage of mismatched
components, in which gears slip and fuses blow, etc.

'~uturism recognises that the machine appears as

a 'pataphysical t e c h n o l o g y wherever monomachy intersects
with dramaturgy in a theatre of warfare--not

only i n the

arena of siegecraft (e.g. the deadfall, the pittrap), but

also in the arena of stagecraft (e.g. the guywire, the
trapdoor).

For Futurism, the a c c i d e n t constitutes the deus

ex machine of either a surprise attack (in warfare) or a

suprise ending ( i n theatre)--a b l i t z k r i e ~of form, in which

the invention of the military engineer merges with the

deception of the lighting engineer.

132

3 ~ u t u r i s ms u g g e s t s that a weapon simply embodies

yet another genre of expression:

be it a missile or a

missive, there is always a weapon wherever a utensil is set

free.

Atomic weapons, after a l l , have slmost become the

acme of aesthetic achievement because, like fine art

(slushfunded by t h e government and stockpiled in

w a r e h o u s e s ) , such works function as the absolute e x c e s s of a

technical sublime, which, if ever allowed t o b e deployed a s
intended, can only r e s u l t in t h e k i n d of dernolition that art
itself has demanded at the extreme of its social revolt.

'~eleuze writes that, "for both Jarry and

Heidegger, Being shows itself in technology by the very f a c t
that it withdraws from it:

"what defines the loss of Being

is rather the forgetting of forgetting, the withdrawal of

withdrawal" but "this can on19 be comprehended ['lpataphysically[

...,] not

metaphysically," and "[tlhis is why Ubu

invents ['Ipataphysics at the same tirne as he promotes

planetary technology" since "it is the culmination of

metaphysics in technology that makes possible the overcoming

of metaphysics, that is, ['Ipataphysics"

(1997:93).

allard rd

dissects t h e s e iron collisions o f

automobiles with the cool precision of a scientist,

depicting the accident as a kind of crashtest for a
pornofilm (in the vein of Cronenberg)--an event in which the
obscenitg of a message coincides w i t h the obscenity of i t s
transit.
only

L i k e an automobile, literature e x e r t s its beauty

when its speed risks the threat of a crash--the

transitive verging into the intransitive so that, as V i r i l i o

might observe, th9 armoured chauffeur mistakes the ability
to travel freely for the ability to attack freely (1986:27).

h r r y writes:

"Pilate gave t h e send-off.

Jesus

got away to a good s t a r t [ . . . . ] [A]ccording, to the excellent

sports commentator St. Matthew, it was customary to

flagellate the sprinters at the start the way a coachman

whips his horses[..

(1965:122).
starter.

..]

Jesus[...]had

a flat right away"

Ballard, likewise, writes:

"Oswald was the

From his window above the track he opened the race

by firing the starting gun.

It is believed that the first

shot was-not p r o p e r l y heard by a l 1 the d r i v e r s [ ,

Kennedy got off to a bad start" (1990:108).

. . .] .

134

'~arinetti imagines t h a t the poetry of Futurisrn

can create a schizo cyborg:
himself with iron" (1991:75).

a "multiplied man who mixes

Harraway observes that, while

such a cyborg has heretofore dramatized a royal science of

interdiction (in which the subject becomes an instrument),
the cyborg can nevertheless dramatize a nomad science of
contradiction (in which the subject becomes an experiment)

(181): the former science making humanity subordinate t o a

rational machine; the latter science making humanity

inordinate to an irrational machine.

' ~ e l e u z eand Guattari argue that

"

[ t ] he celibate

machine first al1 reveals the existence of a much older

paranoiac machine, with its tortures, i t s [ . . . ]shadows"

(1983:18); however, such a mechanism does not manage the

judgemental being of a retributive law ( b e it the Father,
God, or Oedipus); instead, the mechanism mismanages the
fundamental becoming of a distributive art, freeing the

manufacturing of the d r i v e s from any desire for a despot of

desire, because (as Deleuze observes) " [ t j h e unconscious is

an orphan, an atheist and a bachelor" (Carrouges 1975:19).

135
9 ~ y o t a r dsuggeste that s u c h machines valorize the
incommensurabilities of the paralogical and the paradoxical,

neither cancelling nor surpassing the synthesis of the

dialectic:

"[tlhere is the adversary of Bachelor

machination, conviction, another word for the concubinage of

dissimilarst' ( 1990:49).

Bachelor machines dramatize the

s s z s g i a of the this and the not-this, continually inverting

a dyadic hierarchy, while momentarily subverting its mutual

exclusion, al1 the while resisting a totalizing commitment

to the metaphysics of the Aufhebung.

''~audrillard argues that , for the postmodern

condition of 'pataphysics, these three domains of thought

a l 1 intersect in the concept of the parasite, the virus,
whose protean rupture has now subsumed the form of a l 1
potential accidents, be they biologic diseases, mathetic

glitches, or even semiotic heresies ( 1 9 9 3 b : 6 9 ) ,

Ironically

enough, s u c h a viral trope hss in turn become parasitic

i t s e l f , insofar as the concept has proliferated throughout
every system so successfully that its ambiguity now acts as

a kind noisiness that interferes with its own reference.

136
'l~uturism suggeats t h a t j u s t as Marconi might use

the radio to set words free from the limits of the voice in
both space and time so also does M a r i n e t t i use t h e
" f r e e s p e e c h ' of parole i n l i b e r t k t o speed up h i s words t o

the speed of the radio, doing so through t h e commutative

force o f performative speech:

for example, t h e typography

of a text must imitate in print the content of its semantics

through s formal prosopopoeia, just as the sonography of a

text must imitate i n sound t h e content of i t s semantics

through a forma1 onomatopoeia (1991:108-log),

" ~ a c h e l o r machines privilege becoming over being.

Such devices do not embody what Serres might cal1 the

"isorrhesis" of the stator, an engine t h a t cancels its own
movement, either by diminishing its energy or by s t r i v i n ~

toward its most optimal psradigm (the reprise of an old

motion); instead, such devices embody what Serres might cal1

the "homeorrhesis" of the motor, an engine that expands its

own movement, either by replenishing its energy or by

striving-towerd its most l i m i n a l p a r a l o g y ( t h e surprise of a

new motion) ( 1 9 7 5 : 7 2 ) .

137
13~hershenevich
observes that , " [ i ]n a long chain
of images, where one is linked to the other like clockwork
gears, there is only one criterion for success:

expressiveness, based on exceptional novelty" because, "[als

soon as an image gets old, trite, it [starts] slipping like
an old gear, irnpairing the work of the clockwork mechanism"

(151).

When Marinetti d a i m s that "every noun is a[ . . . ]b e l t

set in motion by the vert?

(1991:107), he implies that

writing coincides with a filmic device, whose program

exposes language for the artificial cognition that it is.

''~aulson observes that " [ t lhe parallel equations

of Boltzmann and Shannon" analyze such atomic states of
uncertainty in terms of negentropic probability ( 5 6 ) .
Nomadic science reveals that a thermionic flow of heat and a
cybernetic flow of data c a n be explained by the same
formula.

H = -k B

For Boltzmann:
pi logZ p i .

S = -k E pi log p i .

For Shannon:

For the 'pataphysician, the parallelism

between these two equations might imply that the laws of the
physical-universe correlate the dissipativeness of a system

with the informativeness of a system.

138
157'inguely suggests that the operator o f every
b a c h e l o r machine must ultimately corne to understand the
'pataphysics of such metamorphic machination, embracing t h e

rhesis of a nomad genre rather than the stasis o f a r o y a l

genre:

"Conceptions are fixations.

I f we stand s t i l l , w e

b l o c k our own p a t h , and w e a r e confronted with our own

controversies.

change.

Let us contradict ourselves because we

Let us be good and evil, true and false, beautiful

and loathesome.

We are a l 1 o f t h e s e anyway.

it by accepting movement." ( H u l t e n 6 7 )

Let us admit

139

French Oulipianism:

A 'Pataphssics of Mathetic Exception

"That which certain writers have introduced

with talent (even with g e n i u s ) in their
work[...,]

(Oulipo) i n t e n d s to do

systematically and scientifically, if need be

through recourse to machines that process
information."

(Oulipo 1986:27)

"[Djays are spooky[ . . . ]now that my

dissertation is insane."

(RACTER [36])

Machinic Mathesis

French Oulipians present the second case for the

surrationalism of the 'pataphysical, revising the structure
of exception in order to oppose the irrationalism of the
French Surrealists.

Members of Oulipo (l'ouvroir de

littgrature potentielle) 1 respond to the avant-garde pseudoscience of Jarry by inflecting the mathetic intensities of
numerological forms, arguing that exception results from the
constraint of programs.

Like Futurism, Oulipo regards

literature as a cyborganic phenornenon that results f rom

deliberate collisions betneen tropaic d e v i c e s :
paralogy of accidents.

the machinic

For the Oulipisns, writing is

automatic, insofar as it results not from an aleatory

impulse ( as in Surrealism), but from a mandatory purpose ( as
in Mannerism):

writing is itself a machine to be studied

methodically and guided systematically, as if by a science.

Inspired by Jarry, Oulipo has revised the structure of

exception by using a 'pataphysical epistemology to study the
s ~ z ~ n bi eat w e e n the anomalos o f "constraint" and the
clinamen of "potential."

Working under the auspices of a

speculative institution (le collkae de 'pataphysique),

members of Oulipo (who include, among others, such literati
as Queneau, Lionnais, Calvino, and Perec) study three unique

species of exceptional eventuality:

the a ~ o r i aof order

emerging out of chaos, the chiasm existing between order and

chaos, and the swerve of chaos breaking away from o r d e r .

Such 'pataphysics attempts to reconcile the dichotomy that
metaphysics must establish between t h e mathema of a nomic,
predetermined law (the f a t a of the as is) and the poiesis of
a ludic, indeterminate art (the a l e a of the as if).

Oulipo resorts to 'pataphysics in order to suggest that

even a machinic calculus has the potential to generate the
novelty of anomaly.

Just as science might propose rigorous

systems for producing innovative knowledge, so also m i g h t

poetry propose rigorous systems for producing innovative

literature.

Like the Futurists, who explore the

molecularity of a machinic language, so a l s o do the

Oulipians resort to a lingual atomism in order to imagine

Such an axiomatic

their own anagrammatic radicalities.

condition provides the basis for a 'pataphysical

mathematics, whose ludic rules oppose the royal science o f
structural linguistics.

Such a nomad science suggests that

the mathesis of anagrams can s u b t e n d a cybernetic literature

of the future (the potential of which has already been

portended by s u c h novelties as hypertexts and videogames).

Oulipo explores the epistemology o f such potentialitv,

replacing the metaphysics of thetical cases with the
'pataphysics of hypothetical c a s e s - - t h e

of what might have been.

als ob, the "as if,"

Like Futurism, Oulipo s e e s its

work in ternis of an, as yet, unrealized reality that exists

paradoxically before its time and ahead of its time, taking
place in the tense of the post modo.

Such an avant-garde

pseudo-science endesvours to create potential problems in

the present so that w r i t e r s i n the future might provide an
imaginary s o l u t i o n .

Such a discipline functions within a

ludic genre of speculative experiments:

"1s there any other

canonical way of viewing the future (whether one calls

oneself serious in the[. . . ] ('Ipataphysical sense of the

w o r d ) , than as a bouquet of Imaginary Solutions--that

is, of

potentialities?" (Oulipo 1 9 8 6 : 5 0 ) .

The Collene of 'Pataphvsics

Oulipo represents an auxiliary outgrowth of t h e College

of Vataphysics--an absurd school, founded in 1948 in order
to preserve the memory of Jarry by publishing Cahiers and
Dossiers about his avant-garde pseudo-science.

Reminiscent

of the projectors from Lagsdo (as in the work of Swift) o r

even the professors from Erewhon (as in the work of Butler),

members indulge in a cabalistic spectacle of academic

parodies, constructing a complicated, but meaningless,
bureaucracy of regents and satraps, who lampoon the
institutional arbitrariness of scholastic categories,
imitating what Swift calls the "universal artist," the kind
of person who might breed sheep without wool so as to

advance "speculative learning" (147).

As Taylor remsrks:

"the College of 'Pataphysics promotes ' P a t a ~ h u s i c s in this

world and in al1 others" (Taylor 151).

The College of 'Pataphysics s t r i v e s to substantiate the

imaginary philosophy that Butler in turn only hypothesizes

for his own College of Unreason-a

philosophy t h a t he calls

h s ~ o t h e t i c s (the nowhere science of Erewhon).

Such a

P h i l o s o ~ h i edes Als Ob imagines a set of impossible

exigencies, each of which requires the s o p h i s t r y o f s

possible solution:

" [ t o ] require the youths to give

intelligent answers to the questions that arise therefrom,

is reckoned the fittest conceivable way of preparing them

for the actual conduct of t h e i r affairs" (185-186).

To

teach only t h e r e a l i t y of t h e as is without t h o u g b t for the

as if is to invite the myopia o f a fixed logic:

after all,

an extreme science always risks t h e p e r i l o f its own f o l l y .

No errors are so egregious that reason cannot find a wiley

means t o d e f e n d , at al1 cost, their impugned prestige,

The College o f 'Pataphysics subscribes implicitly to

such an Erewhonian hypothesis:

the idea that, if unreason

cannot exist without its opposite, then s u r e l y an increase

i n t h e former must r e s u l t i n an increase in the latter

( h e n c e , the need t o advocate what is specious in order t o

expedite what i s rational) (187).

The "double c u r r e n c y " o f

such a surrational perspective sustains a deconstructive

undecidability between s y l l o g i s r n and s o p h i s t r y (insofar as
l o g i c is-used t o prove t h a t logic itself cannot be used to
prove):

"[tlhe Professors of Unreason deny that they

undervalue reason:

none can be more convinced than they

are, that if t h e double currency cannot be rigorously

deduced[

...],

the double currency [must) cease forthwith"

(108).' The meta of physics must be invalid if i t cannot

reveal to itself the pata of its own madness.

The College of 'Pataphysics o f f e r s no degree for such a

l e s s o n , but simply grants pupils the permission to indulge

in the kind of epistemological experimentation seen, for

example, in the abstract workshop of Oulipo (where sober

whimsy reconciles work and play in order to reassert t h e

rigorous pleasure of cerebral e x e r c i s e ) .
disciplined daydreaming requires a radical

wilfull naPvet&:

For Queneau, such

SC

i e n c e of

" C w 3 e forge ahead without undue

refinement" since "[wle try to prove motion by walking"

(1986a:51).

Such a nomadic science privileges the

amateurism of tinkering engineers, who p r o c e e d by trial and

error, case by case, f o l l o w i n g a course of a c t i o n rather

than directing a course of a c t i o n :

engagement.

not refinement, but

Such rigorous activity is simpl y a diversion

that follows a clinamen in the t r a j e c t of t h o u g h t .

The Bureau of Surrealism

The College of Pataphysics has in t u r n i n s p i r e d a

conceptual laboratory that does not simply repeat t h e
ironies of either Lagsdo o r Erewhon; instead, the
surrationalism of l'ouvroir d e littkrature ~ o t e n t i e l l e
serves to oppose the irrationalism of J e bureau de

145
rgcherches surr&alistes.

W h i l e A r t a u d might argue t h a t s u c h

a B u r e a u m u s t r e i n t e r p r e t i n s p i r a t i o n , a c c o r d i n g to "an

order t h a t i s i m p o s s i b l e t o e l u c i d a t e by t h e methods o f

ordinary r e a s o n " (1976:105), t h e project of s u c h a B u r e a u

does, n e v e r t h e l e s s ,

differ f r o m t h e p r o j e c t of O u l i p o .

W h i l e A r t a u d i n s i s t s t h a t S u r r e a l i s m m u s t f o l l o w no f o r m u l a
(106),

L i o n n a i s insists that O u l i p i a n i s m must sample e v e r y

formula:

"the goal o f ~ o t e n t i a l l i t e r a t u r e is t o f u r n i s h

f u t u r e w r i t e r s w i t h new t e c h n i q u e s which can d i s m i s s

i n s p i r a t i o n f r o m their a f f e c t i v i t s " ( L e s c u r e 1986:38).

While t h e Bureau p r o v i d e s a f a c i l i t y where t h e p u b l i c

might record its dreams ( f o r the sake of a f u t u r e study),
O u l i p o p r o v i d e s a workshop where a quorum m i g h t i n v e n t new

c h a r t s (for t h e sake o f a f u t u r e d r e a m ) .

Just as F u t u r i s m

s w e r v e s a w a y f r o m t h e i n f l u e n c e o f Symbolism, so also does

O u l i p i a n i s m swerve away from t h e influence o f S u r r e a l i m -

even t h o u g h al1 four aesthetics oppose t h e metaphysics of

reason i t s e l f .

Both t h e S u r r e a l i s t s and the O u l i p i a n i s t s

m a y s u b s c r i b e t o a b e l i e f i n t h e automatism o f writing;

however, t h e O u l i p i a n i s t s r e j e c t t h e b e l i e f that freedom i s

b o r n from t h e h a p h a z a r d r e j e c t i o n of a s t r u c t u r e d
c o n s t r a i n t , arguing t h a t t h e s u r r e a l c o n c e p t of b l i n d chance
m i s t a k e n l y b u t t r e s s e s t h e i d e a t h a t r a d i c a l t h o u g h t can be
b a s e d upon s y s t e r n a t i c i g n o r a n c e .

For Oulipo, no rule c a n be

undermined by pretending that the r u l e does not exist.

Oulipo agrees with the s u r r e a l premise thst concepts of

the true can no longer p r o v i d e a standard for the paradigm
of the real; however, Oulipo argues that to prove this point

by completely abandoning a rational axiology is to commit a

surreal mistake.

Roubaud suggests that, to avoid this

error, Oulipo proposes to envision a kind of "mathematical

surrealism" ( 8 0 ) , in which mathema coincides perfectly with
poiesis (insofar a s both domains refer to the surrealist

virtuality of an as i f - - t h e
disbelief).

Traumwelt of our own suspended

Even a c a l c u l u s textbook can speculate about a

set of alternate realities, each with its own rational

modality ( b e it a hyperbolic space or a transfinite curve).

For Oulipo, the speculative recreations of s u c h mathematics
are no less surreal than the radical poetics of a

bureaucratized oneirocriticism.

Oulipo interprets such revisions of exception as a form

of paradoxical temporality that, like Futurism, reverses
causality through a simulacral precession,

Influence

becomes an act of "plagiarism by anticipation" (1986:31), in

which, by some swerve, a past style merely replicates what a
future style has already originated.

What Lionnais calls

anoulipism (the analysis of a past constraint) may inspire

147
what Lionnais calls synthouli~ism (the synthesis of a future

potentia1)--but

this subsequent potential in turn revises

its precedent constraint through a kind of 'pataphysical

retroversion.

Such s reversa1 is not surreal in its

n o s t a l g i a so much as oneiric in its prognosis.

suggests,

A s Lionnais

" [ i l t is possible to compose texts that

have[. ..]surrealist[...

Jqualities without having qualities

of potential" (Lescure 1986 :38 )

Mathematics and 'Patsphysics

Inspired by the College of 'Pataphysics, Oulipo

attempts to propose a 'pataphysical counterpoint to the

rational axiology of mathematics.

Some members of the

College, such as Queneau and Arnaud (who are also members of

Oulipo) have traced the spirals of their own cognitive
gidouille, deriving the reductio ad absurdum of an

impossible hypothesis:

j u s t as Queneau studies t h e

aerodynamics o f equations (1952b:21), so also does Arnaud

explain the mathematics of umbrellas ( 1 9 5 5 : 4 8 ) .

What the

College has studied on behalf of the clinamen has in turn

influenced the s t u d i e s of Oulipo itself (psrticularly the
literary research o f its mathematical p r o f e s s i o n a l s :

Lionnais, Roubaud, Braffort, et al.--al1 of whom pursue

research inspired less by the rectilinear Cornpars of Euclid

and more b y the curvilinear Dispars of Riemann).

Oulipo merely follows, then extends, the clinamen,

already present in the numerical sophistry of Jarry, who
attributes the origin of science to an ancient geometry, the
"['IPataphysics of Sophrotatos" (1965:251), from which a
Pythagorean philosopher might derive the formula for the
ssz~gia:

When Faustroll uses such a formula in

order to calculate that God is equal to the tangent between

nihility and infinity (1965:256), Jarry parodies the
metaphysical scholasticism of Pascal by suggesting that
belief in the coherence of s u c h logic is no less absurd than

belief in the existence of a deity.

Such a

weird proof only

provides an allegory for the argument that, when deified,

science i t s e l f coincides with such a chiasm between nihility
and infinity:

ie.

the limit of error in science--its

measurement of uncertainty

1--remains incalculable.

Oulipo also follows, t h e n extends, the clinamen,

already present in the numerical sophistry of Marinetti, who
attributes the future of science to an updated calculus, in
which " 1 t J h e mathematical signs +

marvelous syntheses" ( 9 9 : l l .

When Marinetti imagines a

x serve to achieve

poetry of lyrical numbers, he argues that, "[w]ith the

mathematical

-,

the doubting suspension suddenly spreads

itself o v e r the entirc agglomeration of words-in-freedom,"

t h e r e b y eliminating any question which l o c a l i z e s its doubt
upon only one point of awareness (110); instead, every

potentiality is considered in its simultaneity, be it plus

o r minus ( 2 ).'

S u c h equations suggest that, "by

(addressing themselves phonically and optically to the

numerical sensibility)" (110), 'pataphysicians might reveal

the potential for a chiasm between mathema and poiesis.

Roubaud argues that, for Oulipo, to compose poetry is

to undertake a mathetic analysis of language itself ( b o t h
algebraically and topologically ) :
under[. ..]constraint

"

[ w ]r i t i n g

is[ . . . ]equivalent [to] the drafting of

a mathematical text, which may be formalized according to

the axiomatic method" (89). Like Buchanan, who proposes

treating metaphor mathematically end mathesis metaphorically
( 1 3 ) in order to explore their reciprocal influences,
Oulipo endeavours to demonstrate that, only through the
hybridity of s u c h ' pataphysical dilettantism,' can science
ever hope to produce the novelty of anomaly.

Just as

advances in the nomic tradition of mathema depend upon a

ludic sedition against the numerary, so also do advances in

the nomic tradition of poiesis depend upon a ludic s e d i t i o n
against the literary. 5

150
Queneau, for example, wilfully misreads the Euclidean
exercises of Hilbert (who speculates that geometric terms
may be nothing more than cognates for grammatic terms:
e v e r y atomic point

ie.

is a morpheme; every linear curve i s a

phraseme; and every planar field is an ideomeme) ( 1 9 9 5 : 4 ) .

Queneau substitutes these speculative, grammatic terms for
their respective, geometric terms so that the standardized
definition of a line (as an infinite sequence of points)
becomes a bastardized definition of a sentence:

"[elvery

sentence c o n t a i n s an infinity of wordst1--only some are

perceived; the rest are imaginary (13).

Such an

intertextual substitution of poiesis for mathema in effect

produces an aphorism about the potentialities of
intertextuality itself--the ides that "CbJetween two words

of a sentence there exists an infinity of other words" (13).

Queneau dramatizes such 'pataphysical potentiality by

demonstrating his own "parallel postulate," in which t h e

poiesis of any genre might be transposed into the mathema of
some axiom.

Every conic curve p r o v i d e s a metaphor for the

clinamen of a given trope:

the elliptical function of

abbreviation, the paraboloid function of disquisition, and

the hvperbolic function of exaggeration (15).

Like an

equation, each of the axiomatic sentences is itself a

constraint for a set of variables (be they geometric o r

151
grammatic).

The permuting of t h e s e variables generates a

formulation, whose Gbdelian reasoning imposes a constraint

upon the potentials of constraint itself:
not governed

by

ie. "Jalxiorns are

axiomsl' (7). The rule 1s that, for every

rule whose structure is reflexive (including this rule), the

swerve of an exception must intervene.

The Exception of Constraint

Oulipo derives its own exceptional formalities from the

mathema of "combinatorics"--a discipline that studies what
Berge calls configurations:

"[a] configuration arises every

time o b j e c t s are distributed according to[ . . . ]constraints"

( 1) . 6

Such a science pertains to the optimization of

arrangements within determined parameters.

What applies,

for example, to the nomic study of numerals in matrices also

applies to the ludic study of acrostics and rnagic-squares,

crossword and jigsaw-puzzles. 7

The f ixed canon of literary

research has often ignored the nomadic anomaly of s u c h

combinatorics on the assumption that to subscribe to
constraint is to indulge in a frivolous aesthetic even
though the formality of such constraint (as seen, for
example, in the lipogram, the rhopalic, etc.) can afford the

study of poetics with the rigor of a science.

Perec cornplains t h a t "formal mannerismd

...]a r e

relegated to the registers of asylums" wherein

"

[ c ] o n s t r a i n t s are treated[

. ..]as aberrations"

( 1986: 9 8 1 ,

even though the v a l u e s of s u c h a r a d i c a l poetics depend not

upon t h e significance of its themes, but upon the

extravagance of its schema.

Like Futurism, which r e jects

passgism, Oulipo argues that a poetry of the future must

absorb, n o t a v o i d , what i s paradoxical and paralogical i n

the science of the present, since to reject the s e d i t i o n of
the new is simply to adopt t h e tradition of the old,
maintaining unconscious constraints without an appraisal o f
constraint itself.

The d i s t i n c t i o n between poiesis and

mathema i s a c o n s t r a i n t t h a t has outlived its potential, and

t h u s the 'pataphysician must d i s r u p t t h i s constraint by

adopting, as a new constraint, mathema i t s e l f . 8

~ n a b o u suggests that to appeal to an aesthetics of

c o n s t r a i n t i s to reveal the hidden agenda, t h e s e c r e t power,

i n t h e pragmatics c f a l 1 constraint:

"to the extent that

constraint goes beyond r u l e s which seem natural only t o

t h o s e people who have barely q u e s t i o n e d l a n g u a g e , i t forces

t h e system o u t o f its routine functioning, thereby

compelling it to reveal i t s hidden resources" (41). A s
Queneau suggests:

"inspiration which consists in blind

obedience to every impulse is in reality a sort of slavery"

because "the p e t who writes that which cornes into his

head[. ..lis the slave of otber r u l e s of which he is

ignorant" ( ~ d n a b o u1986:41).

To explore the rule is to be

emancipated from it by becoming the master of its ~ o t e n t i a l

for surprise, whereas to ignore the rule is to be imprisoned

in it by becoming the slave to the reprise of its intention.

Roubaud argues that, to realize the potentiality of

such a radical poetics, "a constraint [is] envisaged only on

the condition that this text contain a l 1 the possibilities
of the constraint" (95)--which is to say that the constraint
must evoke the entire domain of its own as if:

not an

exemplary s i n ~ u l a r i t v to be repeated, but an imaginary

multiparity to be explored.

Such a literary manifold does

not produce a variation upon its own significant themes so

much as produce an extravagant scheme of variation.

What is

potential generates a new process rather than an old

product.

The exception to a rule implies, not a freedom

from, but the outcome of, s u c h a constraint.

The exception

explicates the rule, testing its limits, defying its fields,

forsaking the nomic work of one paradigm for the ludic risk
of another paralogy.

Roubaud argues t h a t t h e potential of such a constraint

can a v o i d the imperialism of its own repetition if the

constraint is proposed, but produces only one textual

example:

"there even exists a tendency, which might be

qualifieci as ultra, for which evers text deduced from a

constraint must be classed in the 'applied' domain, the only
admissible text, for the Oulipiani

...]being

the text that

formulates the constraint and, in sa doing, exhausts it"

(91). While the constraints of Oulipo can tend toward

multiple examples only by ceasing to perform the intentions
of Oulipo, s u c h a constraint upon constraint omits the

necessity for deduction in the method itself.

Even though a

constraint must p r o v i d e only a virtual theorem about a

hypothetic textuality, such a theorem must "prove" itself
through at least one imagined solution.

Roubaud argues that, in effect, "a text written

according to a constraint must speak of this constraint"
(Oulipo 1986:12), if only because this constraint upon
constraint dramatizes the reflexive tautology of mathema
itself (hence, a writer like Perec might compose a lipogram

that refers to itself as a lipoaram, repressing the letter E

while mentioning the absent E:

"1 [would] start g i v i n g my

plotting a symbolic turn, so that[

.. .]it

would point up,

without blatantly divulging, that Law that was its

inspiration, that Law from which it would draw[
fruitful narration") ( 1 9 9 4 : 2 8 2 ) .

...]a

rich,

Such a strict, but absurd,

155
law about law nevetheless dramatizes a perverse allegory

about 'pataphysics itself (as if to suggest that reality is

merely a s y s t e m of arbitrsry constrsint, whose r u l e s have
created a science that can in turn discuss such rules).

Constraint provides an allegory for the phenomenal

recurrence of a numerical structure so that, like Fibonacci
sequences (which subtend the n a t u r d anatomy of nautili and
flowers), such acts of poietic mathema evoke 'pataphysical
speculations about the ludic basis of reality itself
(implying that physics is merely the poetic effect of a vast
game that reality must play--a game in which the rules

themselves are at stake).

As Roubaud argues, "something

'additional to' their production intervenes, different from

the s e c r e t s of their enumeration:

the search for a new

multiplicity of limits ( o r of non-limits[ ...]), each the

founder of a remarkabler. ..]proposition, a number no longer
golden, but made of some other precious element, [the] 'rare
earth' of esthetics" (96)--the ironic verity of beauty.

The E x c e ~ t i o nof Potential

Greimas quotes de Tracy in order to argue that no

narrative game lacks imperative r u l e s :

"JO

l n e should beware

of believinn lthatl the inventive mind operates accordina to

chance" (48). Oulipo a g r e e s with Greimas, insofar as it

refuses to equate chance with a freedom from some dictum.
Bens, however, wonders in what way "one [ c a n ] reconcile such

rigor with t h e [ . ..lthe incertitude[ . . . ]that [must]

necessarily accompany potentiality" ( 7 0 ) , and he s u g g e s t s
that Oulipo does so by evoking the sszyaia as a trope for
the ambivalent relativity between the alea and the fata.
Oulipo explores the poetic impact of any aleatoric form that
arises from a n axiomatic rule (for example, the random
s e r i e s of digits in the number

or the random s e r i e s of

primes in the set 1--arbitrary sequences that reveal a

c o r n p l i c i t y between complexity and simplicity).

Queneau cites s u c h mathetic examples of chance in o r d e r

to swerve away from his Surrealist compatriots (who r e j e c t

him for his belief that chance does not necessarily

synchronize with e x t r e m e freedom); instead, chance arises,
not from the absence of a conscious rule, but from the
presence of an ineffable rule (Bnabou 1986:41).

While the

Surrealists must insist that the anagrammatic coincidences

of automatic scription do exemplify the random e x c e s s of

irrational liberation, Baudrillard has gone so far as to

aver that this kind of e x c e s s is not s o arbitrary as it is

mandatory:

it is a necessity exceeding the r u l e which joins

the signifier a n d the signified (a r u l e which is

157
itself supremely arbitrary) (1990:151).

What is surreal

about a rule is not its disappearance, but its reflex-

iveness:

its ability to recognize itself as an exception.

Baudrillard suggests that, for science, there exist two

hypotheses about chance itself:

the first, metaphysical

(suggesting that al1 things are disconnected and divergent,

and only b y chance do they meet each other); the second,
'pataphysical (suggesting that al1 things are connected and
convergent, and only by chance do they miss each other)
(

199Oa:145 )

While quantum physics has qualif ied the

implicit error within deterministic causality, substituting

alea for fata, s u c h a science has nevertheless disclosed an
even more implicit order behind indeterminate causality--a

synchronistic order that is coincidental and conspiratory:

"[clhance[ ...]correspond[s] not to a temporary incapacity of
science to explain everything[ ...]but to the passing from a
state of causal determination to another order, radically
different, also of non-chance"

145). 9

Baudrillard suggests that, for science, "[clhance

itself is a special effect; it assumes in imagination the
perfection of the accident" (1990a:149)--the kind of
accident that characterizes the fatal order of al1 poiesi
(particulary in the case of Oulipo):

"[w]riting[...,]

158

[wlhether poetry or theory, [is] nothing but the projection

of an arbitrary code[...](an

invention of the rules of a

game) where things corne to be t a k e n in their fatal

development" (154).

The game presents an arbitrary ensemble

of constraints, of necessities, whose outcome remains

uncertain.

The science of

' pataphysics

suggests that the

real is a ludic event, whose mandatory f a t e results from an

aleatoric rule that produces, not a reprise of its code so
much as a surprise from its code.

The alea is the a ~ o r i aof

the fats, revealing the paradox of a so-called random order.

Oulipo suggests that the potentials of constraint

coincide with the poiesis of a ludic state, whose mathema
constitutes a playful way to s t u d y al1 that is playful
(doing so in a manner different from the kind of statistical
rationalisrn, which codifies play according to a forma1

matrix of minimax options and zerosum tactics).

Baudrillard

observes that, although whst is ludic does not regard the

rule of its contraints as a mandatory universal, what is
ludic does nevertheless assume that the as if of such
constraints c a n free us from the necessities of the as is:
"by

c h o o s i n ~the rule one is delivered from the lawu--from

its metaphysical prerequisite:

i t s spstem (1990b:133) . ' O

ie, belief in the verity of

The truth of the iudic abides by

no belief; instead, such truth is entertained as one of many

159

hypothetical alternatives:

it is merely a "p~tentiality.'~

Oulipo proposes the as if of such a constraint in order

to swerve away from it through the potential of a mandatory
excepticn.

Perec e x p l a i n s that, "when a system of

constraints is established, there must also be anticonstraint within it" (Hotte 1986276).

Life itself must

include cases of "falsity" and "absence" in the structure of

its mode d'emploi, either altering or deleting an event so
that t h e r e rernains at least one anomalous component to the

puzzle ( 1 9 8 7 : 4 9 7 ) .

For Perec, a constraint must

systematically evoke its own disintegration in a manner that

calls to mind the paradox of the P e r s i a n flaw (insofar as it

perfects what it disrupts):
[...]must

"[tlhe system of constraints

not be r i g i d , there must be some play in it, it

must, as they Say, 'creak' a bit; it must not be completely

coherent; there must be a clinamen" (Motte 1986: 2 7 6 ) . 11

Oulipo suggests that the potential of s u c h a clinamen

evokes a - 'pataphysical multiplicity.

Bens, for exemple,

observes that, " [ s ]ince reality never reveals more than a

part of its totality, it thereby justifies a thousand
interpretations, significations[...],
(72).

a l 1 equally probable"

Just as Bens rnight argue that "potentialitv, more

than a technique of composition, is a certain way of

conceiving the literary" ( 7 2 ) , so also does Lescure argue

that "every literary text is literary because of an
indefinite quantity of potential meanings" (37).

What is

potentialits for the French O u l i p i a n s is thus tantamount to

literariness for the Russian Formalists, insofar as both
concepts theorize the poiesis o f novelty in terms of an

if,

in which to be literary is to pose imaginary solutions

to problematic formalities.

The Anagram of 'Pataphvsics

Oulipo regards poeisis as a form of ars combinatoria,

in which the alphabet provides a fixed array of Lucretian

particles in a state of disciplined permutation.

~gnabou

remarks that, s i n c e al1 the different modes of mathema

(addition, d i v i s i o n , etc.) can be applied to al1 the

different strata of poiesis (morpheme, phraseme, etc.), a

text is just a set of atomistic variables that evolve w i t h i n
a set of axiomatic constants ( 4 4 - 4 5 ) .

~ g n a b o urepeats the

premise of Hjelmslev, who argues t h a t , if language is merely

a forrnulaic way of selecting terms and arranging them in a

forrnulaic wsy, then "an exhaustive c a l c u l u s of the p o s s i b l e
combinations" can be "described by means of a limited number
of premisses" (9). This mathetic analysis of language
presumes that language has a machinic f u n c t i o n :

that it i s

one of many cellular automata.

Greimas, moreover, goes further thsn anyone in

describing such a poietic mathema since his own genre of
Structuralism invokes the abstract mode1 of symbolic logic
in order to derive the formula for literature itself.
Narrative structure can be reduced to an imperial calculus,
in which the given units are arranged within magical
squares, according to a forma1 ensemble of boolean axioms:

conjunction, disjunction, non-conjunction, non-disjunction.

Meaning arises from "the interaction of semiotic
constraints" (48) within a grammar of reciprocal relativity.
Poetic genres simply diagram the transition of "actants"
from position to position in this set of quadratic
relations.

Like the Oulipianists, the Structuralists argue

that poetic genius can be explained according t o a r u l e .

Mathews hss even written texts by multiplying two

matrices of lexical elements in o r d e r to produce
algebraically a third rnatrix of phrasa1 elements (126).

Such a mathetic analysis of grammar suggests that even

aesthetic constraints might themselves be arkanged within a
matrix of genres so that just as Mendelejeff can propose a
periodic table of chernical elements, so also can Queneau
propose a periodic table of poetical elements, both indices

162
acting as atomic diagrams by which to classify the results
of poetic prograns ( ~ n a b o u1 9 8 6 :4 6 )

J u s t as Hendele jef f

reveals the relative positions for possible elements (as yet

unfound), so also does Queneau reveal the relative positions
for potential poetries (as yet untried).

Such analysis

offers a topography of virtuality, revealing domains of

anomely for futuristic innovation.

Oulipo may appear to repeat the kind of theories that

typify Structuralism, but (as Roubaud observes),

"[s]tructure, in its[ . . . ]Oulipian s e n s e , has only a minimal

relation to 'Structuralism"'

(93).

Oulipo in fact draws a

subtle, b u t urgent, distinction between the Structura of

Greimas and the Structure of Queneau:

the former

iescribing a static diagram for the general case of a text;

the latter inscribing a rhetic program for the special case

of a text.

S t r u c t u r a corresponds to the predictable reprise

of the Compars, providing an hermeneutic formula for

extracting constants from variables:

it is a mode1 product

to be emulated--whereas Structure corresponds to the

unpredictable surprise of the Dispars, providing an

heuristic formula for injecting variants into variables:
i t is a modal Process to be explored. 12

163
B a u d r i l l a r d observes that, in the case of Structura,

"[tlhis is what linguistics does:

it forces language i n t o

an autonomous sphere in its own i m a g e , and Eeigns t o have

found i t t h e r e 'objectively,' when from start to finish, i t

[ h a s ] inventedt

...]it"

(1993a:203)--mistaking accidents for

destinies when given an event of anagrammatic significance.

Baudrillard sees that, for the Structura of Saussure, the

poiesis of the anagram threatens to undermine the very
mathema of the s c i e n c e that must use language itself to
study such language (hence, Saussure resists the radical

outcome that his own studies of the anagram nevertheless

enforce) (1993a:SlZ).

Whereas the metaphysical atomism of

Structura reduces words to a b s o l u t e units that

S U P P O ~ ~

signification, the 'pataphysical atomism of Structure

reduces w o r d s to dissolute units that subvert signification.

Baudrillard writes that "[al11 these formulas converge

on the idea of a 'Brownian' stage of language, an emulsional
stage of the signifier, homologous to the molecular stage of

physical-matter, that liberates 'harmonies' of meaning just

as fission or fusion liberates new molecular affinities"

(1993a:218).

When Perec, for exemple, writes a heterogram,

in which each line of g r i d contains a different sequence of

the ten most common letters (AEILNORSTU) p l u s one other, he
d o e s not simply e n c i p h e r messages within a tabula that makes

164
sense when read left to right, line by line; instead, he

explores the combinatorics of an unanticipated configuration

(1985:[7]).

Just as the as if of a mathematic concept often

coincides uncannily with the as is of its phenomenal

reality, so also does the anagram contrive a possible
(rather than encipher a previous) meaning.

Perec can thus transform a sequence s u c h as ACEILNORSTU

i n t o a "factory of exchange" (l'usine d troc) which turns

howls (us& cri tonal) into tools (outils B s o c ) , according

to a closed system--a container of undecennary orderliness:

"you have the casket:

l'&crin:

here, nude, art dares it" ( t u as

ci, nu, art l'ose)

(1985:[28]).

Rather than

encode a cryptic keyword (whose repeated presence rnight

dramatize the "ulcerations" of such a formidable
constraint), these anagrams disperse the atomistic particles

of such a keyword through a kind of literal seepage ( t h e

" u l c e r a t i o n s " evoking a rule for the sake of erasing its

pain).

The anagram does n o t recycle so much as atomize its

meaning,. dissecting it, dispersing it, until the keyword

vanishes (just as every meaningful phenornenon vanishes

through the permuted excesses of its own atomic events).

The Proaram of 'Pataphvsics

Oulipo derives its inspiration for this kind of

anagrammatic 'pataphysics from the work of Swift, who
conceives "a project for improving speculative knowledge
by[ . . . )mechanical operations" (148).

What Swift describes

with humour in a spirit of moral seriousness, Oulipo

practices w i t h humour in a spirit of sober whimsy.

What

Like the projectors at

Swift satirizes, Oulipo plagiarizes.

the Grand Academy of Lagado, the professors at l'ouvroir d e

littgrature potentielle recombine t h e disiecta eembra of a
textual history in order to i n v e n t an absurd device that can
eliminate t h e necessitg for inspiration:

"[elvery one knows

how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and

sciences; whereas by[ . . . ]contrivance the most ignorant
person[ . . . ]may write books[...jwithout

the least assistance

from genius or study" (148).

Swift imagines a screen across which the spectacle of

the alea-and the fata can appear and disappear through the
automation of an ars combinatoria.

The Grand Academg of

Lagado creates a framework of wood cubes, that suive1 on

wire axles, their numerous facets covered by square pieces

of paper with al1 t h e words of t h e language engraven upon

them in al1 their moods and cases, but without any order, so

t h a t anyone turning t h e handles on t h e e d g e of the frame

might alter the old sequence of recorded t h i n k i n g and thus
evoke a new sentence

."

What Swift berates metaphysically

as a reckless device, Oulipo equates 'pataphysically with a

bachelor engine:

the as if of a literary computer.

Like

the Futurists, the Oulipians, equate poiesis itself with a

machinic paralogy (whose potential involves an intended

accident:

the swerve of anagrammatic coincidences).

Oulipo imagines that such a computer can express the

potential of a constraint too laborious to be otherwise

fulfilled ( s i n c e machines can easily perform the exhaustive

task of both selecting words and combining them--in a way
that has since corne to define the mesostics of Cage or the

aleatories of Mac Low); however, such acts o f prosthetic

automation do not simply assist in the process of writing so

much as replace the concept of writing itself.

Thomas

observes that the Prefaces to poerns by Oulipo do not serve

as authorial statements about semantic intention; instead,

t h e y comprise a mode d'emploi, not unlike a READMLDOC that

precedes a computer program (18).

A t e x t i s no longer

simply a message produced by, and for, a person, so much as

it is a proaram produced by, and for, a device--an algorithm

designed to make its reader become a writer.

167
Oulipo imagines that such a cybernetic literature of
anagrammatic permutations might realize the dresm of Borges
and create a garden of forking paths-an

interactive

experience of rhizomatic potentials, in whicb the machine

expects the reader to behsve like a writer who must deflect
the course of the narrative through an ensemble of crucial
options:

t h e as if of multiple if t h e n s .

What Queneau

calls a "tree literature" (1986b:156) and what Fournel calls

a "theater tree" (1986:159) have corne to represent some of

the first texts to discuss the potential for interactive

innovations (particularly hypertexts and videogames).

Such

cases of cybernetic literature begin to dramatize a

philosophy of 'pataphysical perspectivism, insofar as they

attempt to imagine a multitude of divergent realities

created simultaneously from the same text.

Queneau in Cent Mille Milliards de pomes perhaps

o f f e r s the first such case-study in his attempt to produce a

book that is not so much a volume for storing poetry as a

machine for creating poetry:

t e n sonnets are written on ten

pages with c u t lines so that a line from any sonnet can be

supplanted by its cognate from any of the other sonnets

(while still preserving all their rules of rhythm and
syntax).

S i n c e the Cartesian product of ten sonnets with

f o u r t e e n lines (10'" permit trillions of different cases, a

168
s i n g l e reader, reading one a second, must survive for more

than a thousand millenia in order t o read every poem.

Such

a book remains inscrutable, not because of its illegibility,

but because of its potentiality.

Such a book is

'pataphysical, insofar as it deals with t h e as if of what is

possible in virtuality, but impossible i n actuality.

Oulipo suggests, moreover, that even though such poetry

reveals interpretation to be inexhaustible, 'pataphysics

does not believe i n the motto, ars l o n ~ avita brevis;

instead, 'pataphysics implies that "[alrt is not long enough

even in t h e shortest of livestf(Oulipo 1 9 8 6 : 4 8 ) .

What takes

forever to do in actuality takes no time at al1 to do in

virtuality:

"The Cent Mille Milliards de pokmes [has]

rendered this clear to ['Jpataphysicians" ( 4 8 ) .

The

onerous, if not sublime, burden of al1 the unexplored

p o t e n t i a l s must always outweigh the d u r a b i l i t y of any one

text since no poem can endure long enough to resist al1 of

the new poems that it in turn evokes.

It too is m e r e l y an

intimation o f a future text that is likewise unreadable

in

its absolute e n t i r e t s because it too is no more than a

virtual machine for creating the possible.

Oulipo regards such a poem as a kind of literary

cornputer, whose power resides in its ability ta graph a "map

169
of[

...]virtualities"

(1986:50)--a map t h a t alludes t o the

increasing role of industrial machines in a l 1 a s p e c t s of

poiesis:

"[tlhis exploration[ . . . )only begins to suggest the

vastness[.

.. Jexplorable when[ . . . ]thsnks

finally[

...]b e g i n

to reveal the constants of a writer in al1

sorts o f areas" ( 4 9 - 5 0 ) .
"effect[

...]of

to cornputers we can

Such a poem produces an

mystification" (501, defamiliarizing t h e

romantic mystique of irrationalism by providing a

parenthetical example in the present for a hypothetical
machine of the future--a machine able to peruse t h e poetry
of humans e v e n as it writes p o e t r y of i t s own:

"being, like

Swift, skeptical prophets, we e n t e r t a i n these prospects

[

' ]pataphysicallytt( 50 ) .

M a t h e t i c Machines

Calvino argues that "the aid of a computer, far from

r e p l a c i n ~the creative act of the artist, permits the latter
rather to liberate himself from t h e slavery of s combinatory
search, allowing him also the best chance of concentrating
on this 'clinamen' which, alone, can make of the text a true
work of art" (1986a:152).

Computerized experiments with

poetry so far resemble Surrealism because they mimic

aleatory impulses (chance forais, random styles, broken

logic); however, the creativity of machinery might be better

170

served by the mannerism of its forma1 rigour:

"[tlhe true

literature machine Lis] one that itself feels the need to

produce disorder, a s a resction against its preceding
production of order:

a machine that [ c a n ] produce avant-

garde work to free its circuits when they are choked by too
long a production of classicism" (13).

Calvino suggests in effect that, because cybernetics

has begun to develop machines capable of autodidactics and

autopoietics, "nothing prevents us from f oreseeing a
literature machine that at a certain point feels unsatisfied
with its own traditionalism and starts to propose new ways

of writing, turning its own codes completely upside down"

(l986b:13).

Such a machine might analyze the material

relations between poetics and history by correlating its own

stylistic variation to the stock index:

"[tjhat indeed will

be the literature that corresponds perfectly to a

theoretical hypothesis:
literature" (13).14

it will, at last, be the

While the Surrealists argue that,

because -inspiration is instinctive, it is inexplicable, the

Oulipianists argue that what is most automatistic in the

instinct of writing must also be most pronrammable.

Oulipo suggests that "[tlhe Word is[...]

ontogenetically [']pataphysicalU ( 1 9 8 6 : 4 8 ) ,

insofar as

171
language does not depict the world of the as is so much as
create the world of the as if:
creationsl

. . . ] should

"[tlhe time of created

cede to the era of creating crestions"

(48)--not artifacts, but catalysts:

modes d'emploi.

not objets d'art, but

Poetry is no longer the effect of

inspiration so much as it is the cause for inspiration:

"[tlhe whole world of literature ought to become the object
of numerousl
cybernetic.l5

. . .] prostheses"

( 3 1 )--be they linguistic or

For Oulipo, inspiration is ultimately not

irrational so much as it is surrational.

Its creativity

results from the fata of a simple law that applies itself to

itself in order to form the alea of a complex art.

The

swerve of a clinamen arises from the rigor of its influence.

Oulipo implies that each text ought to become no more

than a tool to be deployed upon itself by yet another text

in order to produce "a Topology of Commonplaces, in which

one[

... ]succeed[s]

in abstracting cornmonplaces from the

structures of commonplaces--and then a 'squared' topology of

these places, and so forth until one attains, in a rigorous
analysis of this regressus itself, the absolute" (Oulipo

1986:50).

Oulipo, however, introduces a clinarnen into this

metaphysics of such an absolute.

The repetition of a past

constraint (the r e ~ r e s s u s )swerves into the intimation of a

future potential (the digressus).

The machinic accident of

such a swerve threatens the existential originality of

creat ivity by reminding the poet about the potential

iterability of creativity itself--which is to Say that even
'pataphysics must evoke its own 'pataphysical retroversion.

Notes to C h a ~ t e r4

'Oulipo privileges ouvroir over oeuvre.

Rather

than refer to itself as une sgm'minaire d e littgrature

expbrimentale, Oulipo refers to itself a s a un ouvroir de

littgrature potentielle, doing so for two reasons:

first.

the word sminaire connotes the individual experience of

m a s c u l i z e d eugenics, whereas the word ouvroir connotes the

collective experience of a femininized industry; second, the

word expkrimentale suggests the outcome of a practice in the
present, whereas the word potentielle emphasizes the promise
of an outcome for the future.

2 ~ u t l e rvrites thst nreason[

. ..] is

the

complement of reason, without whose existence reason itself

were non-existent," and for such an Erewhonian 'pataphysics,
irrationalism is the hyperbolic, not the antonymic, extreme
of rationalism itself:

"[e]xtremes are alone logical, but

they are always absurd" (187).

Reason is an extreme species

of reciprocal opposition, whose logic is potentially more

threatening than the average s ~ z ~ n and

i a its conflation of
difference:

"the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean

is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme" (187).

174

'~arinetti writes:

"[m]y

love of precision[

...]

has naturally given me a taste for numbers, which live and

breathe on the paper like living beings in our new numerical
sensibilitv" (1991:llO).

Algebra provides a mode1 for

grammatical innovations--for e x a m p l e , "it would have needed

at least an entire page of description to render this vast
and complex battle horizon had 1 not found this[ . . . ]lyric
equation:

'horizon = sharp bore of the sun +5 triangular

shadows (1 kilometer wide) + 3 lozenges of rosy light +5

fragments of hills +30 columns of smoke +23 flames'"

(110).

'~athematicians have f requently recognized that

wherever mathema must explicate its own axiomatic paradoxes,
i t must abandon itself 'pataphysically to the imaginary

solutions of its own antonym--poiesis:

consider, for

example, the paradoxes of Aristotle ( a s seen in the stories

by Carroll about Wonderland), the paradoxes of Lobachevsky

(as s e e n in the stories by Abbott about Flatland) , the

paradoxes of G6del (as s e e n in the stories by Hofstadter

about Escherland), and the paradoxes of Mandelbrot ( a s seen
in the stories by Pickover about Lat&&carfia).

'~heories a b o u t n u m b e r s have o f t e n s p r u n g from

m a t h e t i c r e c r e a t i o n s , p a r t i c u l a r l y t h e s t o c h a s t i c s of d i c e -

g a m b l i n g ( a s i s t h e c a s e f o r P a s c a l 1 j u s t as t h e o r i e s a b o u t
letters h a v e o f t e n s p r u n g f rom p o i e t i c r e c r e a t i o n s ,
p a r t i c u l a r l y t h e l i n g u i s t i c s o f word-jumbling
c a s e for S a u s s u r e 1 .

( a s i s the

Not o n l y do b o t h types o f royal s c i e n c e

r e s o r t t o the ars l u d e n s o f a nomad s c i e n c e i n o r d e r t o

i n n o v a t e t h e i r p a r a d i g m s ; b o t h t y p e s o f science r e s o r t t o

the a b d u c t i v e r e a s o n i n g o f s t a t i s t i c s i n o r d e r t o e s p l a i n
t h e a t o m i s t i c q u a l i ties t h a t d e f ine their o b j e c t o f s t u d y .

'combinatorics can be u s e d t o p e r f o r r n a l g e b r a i c
o p e r a t i o n s u p o n two o r more m a t r i c e s , m a p p i n g concrete
e l e m e n t s f r o m o n e set o n t 0 t h e a b s t r a c t s t r u c t u r e o f a n o t h e r
set, m a n i p u l a t i n g t h e i r e l e m e n t s i n o r d e r t o p r o d u c e one o f

three k i n d s o f C a r t e s i a n p r o d u c t :

s u r j e c t i v e ( a t least one

element f o r each p o s i t i o n ) ; i n . i e c t i v e ( a t m o s t one e l e m e n t

f o r each p o s i t i o n ) ; o r b i j e c t i v e ( o n l y t w o e l e m e n t s f o r e a c h
position).

B o t h linguistics a n d cybernetics deploy t h i s

s c i e n c e i n order t o c a l c u l a t e combinatory s t a t i s t ics f o r

phonernic f r e q u e n c i e s o r e v e n e n t r o p i c r e d u n d a n c i e s .

176
k u l e r , f o r example, proposes a f e i o u s problen of
configuration:

g i v e n two s e t s , e a c h w i t h ten d i f f e r e n t

e l e m e n t s , d i s t r i b u t e a l 1 o f them i n t o a 1 0 x 10 g r i d such
t h e t e a c h ce11 c o n t a i n s only t w o e l e m e n t s , one from each
set, w h i l e no r a n k o r file c o n t a i n s more than o n e e l e m e n t

from e i t h e r s e t .

Perec uses t h i s c o n f i g u r a t i o n for the

s t r u c t u r e of h i s mode d'emploi,

i n which ten characters and

t e n s c e n a r i o s are permuted t h r o u g h o u t a 10 x 10 g r i d for a

housing cornplex:

a k n i g h t ' s g r a n d t o u r around t h e story's

chessboard determines the sequence of n a r r a t i o n (1987:501).

' ~ a t h e m a and p o i e s i s i n t e r s e c t i n t h e domain o f

metaphor, t h e f i g u r e of a f i g u r e , be it a number o r a
l e t t e r , b o t h o f which c a n render a n account.

Nowhere is

t h i s r e l a t i o n more explicit t h a n i n t h e s t r u c t u r e o f t h e
a n a l o g y , an economy between two m e t a p h o r s , t h e r e l a t i o n of
their relations.

Both mathema a n d p o i e s i s i n v o l v e t h e u s e

of a r a t i o , a method o f r e a s o n ( s o t o speak), t h a t m e a s u r e s
t h e r e l a t i o n between two m e a s u r e s ( i n t h i s case t h e
m e t a p h o r i c a l r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n mathema a n d p o i e s i s

itself:

i e . the s v z v g i a between o p p o s i t e paradigms).

161

'~audrillard s u g g e s t s that the d i f ference between

the alea and the fata i s subject to t h e reversion of the
s ~ z v g i a . For Baudrillard, science always expects order to

a r i s e out of chaos in order to resist chaos in what amounts

to a desperate battle, a sisyphean effort, waged against an

eternal entropy:

"Chance tires God"

1990: 1 4 7

The

science of 'pataphysics, h o w e v e r , implies that, because

chance is what makes tolerable the brutality of fatality,
chance is tiresorne not b e c a u s e God must always prevent it,

but because God must always produce it.

l d O u l i p o suggests that mathesis is as ludic as

poiesis, insofar as such a system of constraint c a n c r e a t e a

v i r t u a l r e a l i t y o f arbitrated rules to relativize the actual
reality of motivated rules.

Constraint r e l i e s upon the

r h e t o r i c a l strategies o f metalepsis, exchanging signs about

the exchanging of signs, in order to state reflexively that

'this is play. '

S u c h play coincides with the as if of

suspended disbelief:

ie, the perspectivism of the

'pataphysician, who no longer distinguishes between the

unreality of the semic and the actuality of the ontic.

178
% l o t t e a r g u e s t h a t , when a p p l i e d t o t h e a n a g r a n ,
t h e p o t e n t i a l s o f such a c l i n a m e n r e i f y t h e v e r y c o n s t r a i n t
that they evade:

"one c a n trace t h e path of the c l i n a m e n

through t h e t e x t , line by line, and its c o n s e q u e n c e s are

considerable:

the language of t h e new f orm, when compared

t o the o l d , d e s c r i b e s a radical swerve t o w a r d t h e n o r m a t i v e "

(Motte 1986:275).

The dysfunction o f t h e s y s t e m i s itself

s y s t e m a t i z e d as a f u n c t i o n o f t h e s y s t e m so t h a t t h a t what

i s p a r a l o g i c a l i n one s c i e n c e becomes p a r a d i g r n a t i c i n
another:

such i s the clinamen of t h e c l i n a m e n .

12Within m a t h e m a t i c s , w e m i g h t c o n t r a s t t h e r o y a l
S t r u c t u r a of H i l b e r t w i t h t h e nomad S t r u c t u r e of M a n d e l b r o t :

the former, seeking to p o r t r a y q u a n t a 1 d i m e n s i o n s as t h e

p r e d i c a t e norm f o r p l a n e geometry; t h e l a t t e r , s e e k i n g t o

portray f r a c t a l dimensions as a n a l t e r n a t e c a s e to plane

geometry.

We might also c o n t r a s t t h e r o y a l S t r u c t u r a o f

R u s s e l l w i t h t h e nomad S t r u c t u r e of G8del:

t h e former,

seeking t o p o r t r a y c a t e g o r i c a l p a r a d o x as a b e r r a n t to s e t
theory; t h e l a t t e r , s e e k i n g t o elaborate c a t e g o r i c a l p a r a d o x
as i n h e r e n t t o set t h e o r y .

179

%ift

writes:

"The professor then desired me to

observe, for he was going to set his engine at work.

The

pupils at his command took each of them hold of an iron

handle, whereof t h e r e were forty fixed round the edges of
the frame, and giving them a sudden turn, the whole
disposition of the words was entirely changed,

He then

comrnanded[...]the lads to read the several lines softly as

they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or
four words together that might make part of a sentence, they
dictated to the[ ...]scribes[....]"

(148-150).

140ulipo imagines a future potential that RACTER,

a computer program, has almost fulfilled (insofer as such a

progrsm composes grammatically correct, but semantically
surreal, poetry without human input:

"[wlhen my electrons

and neutrons war, that is my thinking" ([IIO]).

Such a

program reveals the ability of language to make sense to any

reader despite being used formulaically in any manner--or

the computer d a i m s , "a leotard, a commissioner, a single

hoard, al1 are understandable in their own fashion," and
"[iln that concept lies the appalling truth" ( [ I l 8 3 ) . 15

as

180
1 5 ~ u e n e a uhas e v e n cited Turing in order to state

that o n l y a machine can appreciate a s o n n e t written by

another machine (1961:[111).

Turing argues that, for a

machine t o think, i t must behave only as i f it t h i n k s ( 5 3 ) ,

portraying its own mathema a s a function of poiesis (through
a game of d i a l o g i c m i m i c k r y ) .

The d i a l o g u e between t h e

machinic and t h e a n t h r o p i c may n o t be about a d i a l o g u e

between an original and i t s imitator so much as a

dialectical interaction between the two a s p e c t s o f a d i v i d e d

subject--a

self that i s reading itself as a t e x t .

181
Canadian "Pata~hvsics: A 'Pataphssics of Mnemonic Exception

"Palaeontology reigns, it would seem over a

kind of criminal unconscious of the species ,

since this race for fossils, this forced

exploration bears a strange resemblance to

the exploring of the fossils of the

unconscious.

Each has about it the same

ressentiment as to our origins."

(Baudrillard 1994a:72)

"In the world of 'Pataphysics, Canada is

Nowhere. "

( Wershler-Henry

1994: 6 6 )

The Nowhere Science

Canadian "Pataphysicians present the third case for the

surrationalism o f the 'pataphysical, revising the structure
of exception in order to oppose the irrationalism of
Canadian-Nationalists.

The Canadian "Pataphysicians respond

to the avant-garde pseudo-science of Jarry by inflecting the

mnemonic intensities of palaeological forme, arguing that

exception results from the corruption of memories.

The

Canadian tlPataphys
ic ians have i n c l uded s u c h poets as

McCaffery, Nichol, and Dewdney, al1 of w h o m have parodied

the environmental mythopoiesis of s u c h critics as Frye,

Atwood, and Kroetsch (for whom literature is merely the
side-effect of a geography--the surreal terrain of a
collective unconscious).

Like Futurism and Oulipism,

"Pataphysics opposes such mysticism, treating literature,

not as a mythopoeic, but a s a cyborganic, phenornenon.

Canadian "Pataphysics reveals that any attempt by

Canada to define a coherent identity for its own state in
response to the dominant identity of another state (be it

European or Arnerican) simply reifies the metaphysics of the

state itself (its nationalism, its imperialism).

Canadian

"Pataphysics resorts to Jarry in order to parody the

metaphysics of both Canadian autonomy and European hegemony
--but by doing so, s u c h "Pataphysics ironically reifies the
European hegemony of 'pataphysics itself.

Wersbler-Henry

observes that, for the cartography of 'pataphysics, "Canada

is Empty" ( 6 6 ) ,

sous rature, s i n c e the map for the College

of 'Pataphysics does not include such a country in its

sphere of influence--even though the map appears, ironically
enough, in an issue of the Dossiers that discusses the vers
'pataphysics of the arctic (Fassio 30-31).

Wershler-Henry suggests that, despite the intent of

Jarry to address the paralogy of al1 such eccentrism, the

183
legacy of Jarry may have served only to install the ubiquity
of his own centrality.

Wersbler-Henry suggests that,

despite the paradox of this oversight, Canadian

"Pataphysicians have done little to unveil their obscured
presence so that, for Canada, "[t]he

"~ataphysical field

remains perpetually open, [a] 'smooth space' that baffles

State attempts at philosophical containment" (67).

Canadian

"Pataphysics marks its difference from its imperial cousin

(*pataphysics) through a swerve (clinamen)" (67), resorting
to European 'pataphysics in order to parody European

'pata~hysics,granting Canada its own autonomy from the

question of autonomy itself by portraying these paradoxical

endeavours as an imagined solution to mnemonic problems.

Canadian "Pataphysicians make a spectacle of thematic

banality by presenting their own brand of archaeological
misinformation, reducing such a mnemonic paradigm to a set
of 'pataphysical expenditures.

Rather than indulge in

mythomania, "pataphysicians resort to the tropes of the

anomalos,

the s ~ z s n i a ,and the clinamen, in order to create

their own forrns of satirical criticism ( b e it the probable

systems of Nichol, the perseus proiects of McCaffery, or the

natural histories of Dewdney).

This kind of nomadic science

does not attempt to portray the essence of its own culture;

instead, such criticism strives to present the play of

wonder over wisdom, evoking what Dewdney might cal1 "a

universe where whet we consider uncanny[

...]occurs

almost

ten t i m e s as frequently" (1982:30)--a universe t h a t in the

e n d turns out t o be none other than our own.

Quotidian Quotation

McCaffery and Nichol write that "Canadian "Pataphysics

q u i t e clearly i s a literature that, as yet, has no archive,"

and "[ijts absence of inscription superbly parallels its

absence of thought" (TRG 1992:303).

Wershler-Henry observes

that Canadian "Pataphysics eludes definition, because "many

Canadian "Pataphysicists share the affinity of the European
and American colleagues for dissimulation" ( 6 8 ) , with
individuals coexisting under various pseudonyms amid various
collectives, be t h e y actual or unreal:

t h e Toronto Research

Group, the Institute of Linguistic Onto-Genetics, et al.

Canadian "Pataphysics does indeed mimick the 'pataphysics of
such European institutes as le colibne de ' ~ a t a ~ h a s i q uor
e

l'ouvrai-r de littgrature potentielle; however, such a

science marks i ts dif f erence f rom European

' pataphysics

through s change in diacritical orthography.

Canadian "Pataphysics adds another vestigial apostrophe

t o its name i n order to mark not o n l y the excess silence

185
i m ~ o s e dupon Canadians by a European avant-garde, but a l s o

the ironic speech proposeci bg Canadians against a European

avant-garde.

M c C a f fery and Nichol suggest that Canadian

"Pataphysics moves from elision ( ' ) to quotation ( " ) through

a superinducement on elision--"the doubling of the elide, a

doubled inversion and inverted doubling" (TRG 1992:301).

parody of parody itself, such 'pataphysics p e r f o r m s a

clinamen upon its own history, simulating it (through

quotation) while disrupting it (through deviation).

The

unknown origins of 'pataphysics are explained by the unknown

science of 'pataphysics:

"the quotation[

...]of

the given

that we do not understand but with emendations that serve to

constitute our explanation" (301-302).

Canadian "Pataphysics suggests that its d u a l , but open,

quote signifies a "portmanteau confluence" (TRG 1992:301) of

the meta ( b e y o n d ) and the para (beside), situating i t s e l f
within a place, both external and supernal
--a place that, like Canada, is defined paradoxically by its

placelessness:

The open

the interzone of ethernity.

quote

for s u c h a science marks the openness of a site that muat

cite its own openness.'

I t s space does not tell the vhole

truth because it never has the lest word.

To quote truth in

such a space is to engage in an endless process of eruptive

aperture, "the [ s ]cience of the never-ending

186
never-commencing discourse" (302)--a science without a fixed
ground for generalization, only a f l u i d field for
specialization:

"Our whole can o n l y be our part.

This is

t h e stated openness of our quotation." (303).

Canadian "Pataphysics quotes European 'Pataphysics in

order to parody the m y t h i c desire in Canada for an
autonomous, i f not indigenous, archetype of mnemonic
identity, be it the theme of pastoralism, as in the case of
Frye (1971:241) or the theme of survivalism, as in the case
of Atwood ( 1 9 7 2 : 3 2 ) .

Such criticism seeks t o establish a

mnemonic paradigm of originality through an act that

Kroetsch m i g h t cal1 "archaeology" (1989:2)--a term allegedly
borrowed from Foucault, but misunderstood by Kroetsch, who

attributes to it a hermeneutic connotation that Foucault is

careful to avoid.

A s Davey suggests, this

kind of mnemonic

thematism is a reductive endeavour, often characterized by

simplistic misprision (1983:3).

At best, such criticism is

nothing more than a poor case of unconscious ' p a t ~ p h y s i c s ,

l a r g e l y unaware o f its o w n philosophic absurdities.

Irrational Thinktanks

Canadian "Pataphysicians parody the acedemic banality

of such critics by proposing a philosophic alternative to be

187
studied by irrational thinktanks:

the Toronto Research

Group, the Institute for Linguistic Ontogenetics, the

"Pataphysical Hardware Company, et al.--virtual

cartels that

act as marginal cognates for the academies of Laputa or

.'

~revhon

L i k e le coll&ne d e '~ataphusiaueor 1 ' ouvroir de

littthture potentielle, such phantasmatic institutions

comprise a Canadian set of 'pataphysical laboratories, a l 1
of which explore the poetics of anomaly, on the assumption

that literary research must be more experimental than

instrumental :

"al1 research is symbiotic & cannot exist

separate from writing," and "where action eliminates the

need for writing[,] research can function to discover new
uses for potentially outdated forms" (TRG 1992:23).

Imaginary academies, such as these, al1 imply that the

mythic desire for cultural essences can only reinforce the
metaphysical theorization of an imperial paradigm.

Unlike

research, theories do not necessarily involve an ad hoc

exploration of writing during the process of writing, but
involve a de facto exploitation of writing after the process
of writing.

Al1 theories face their o b j e c t with autocratic

stances and imperative tactics.

Al1 theories in effect

subordinate thought to the nomic instrumentalism of a royal

science, whereas research coordinates thought through the
ludic experimentalism of a nomad science.

For the research

of such imaginary acsdemies, language itself represents a

cyborganic phenornenon, in which e v e r y text becomes a poetic

device, a novel brand of "book-machine," whose virologic
mechanism uses us more than we use it. 3

The Toronto Research Group, for example, r e j e c t s

univocal theories in favour of dialogic research, replacing
the scientific individual with the collective endeavour of
"a synthetic subject (based on a We-full, not an I-less
paradigm)" (TRG 1992:lO-11).

Rather than embrace the royal

imperialism of an objective science, such a thinktank

studies the nomad radicalism of a sophistic science, arguing

thst, because "al1 theory is transient & after the fact of

writing" (23 )

the poetic research of s "pataphysician

differs from the noetic theories of a metaphysician:

"these

reports make no pretence to a professorial legitimation"

(12); instead, they risk the propriety of reasoning itself

through the theoretical eclecticism of "synthetic proposals"

(10-11).

Such research p r o v i d e s a ludic alibi for the

mnemonic-paralogy of a radical science.

The Institute for Linguistic Ontogenetics, likewise,

rejects a royal paradigm in favour of a nomad paralogy,
replacing the theories of structural linguistics with the
research of linauistic ontogenetics, "a tool for prying

189
mankind from[

...]set

mental attitudes towards language--set

attitudes which, f o r the most part, are based upon

linguistic superstition" (Writers 1985:44).

Rather than

reprise a fixed array of semic forms, such a thinktank

invents its own mathetic axiology, one that defines language

in terms, not of an objective structure, but of a

"projective wordstruct," whose forms do not depict, so much
as create, reality through a kind of quantum physics, or

lingual atomism, which Truhlar describes a s "chronospatiodynamic" (1980:lOZ).

Such research also p r o v i d e s a ludic

alibi for the mnemonic paralogy of a radical science.

The "Pataphysical Hardware Company, moreover, imagines

an applied science that might utilize such surrational
innovations in order to produce an array of marketable
commodities--"[e]verything
1993:115):

for your imaginary needs" (Nichol

not blank paper, but "Genuine Brand B l a n k

Verse"; not plaster dust, but "Jarry Brand Plaster de

Paris"; not rose seeds, but "Grow Your Own Stein P o e m , " etc.
Such a project does not celebrate a functional technology so
much as satirize the linguistic dysfunction of the object

itself, its potential to be deployed in any way imaginable,

despite the standard function for which it has been normally
designed.

Such objects parody the fetishes of a capital

economy, whose phvnance e n c o u r a g e s conspicuous consumption

(among other imaginary solutions) in order to fulfill a

panoply of desires that do not exist.

Irrational thinktanks such as t h e s e are as ephemeral as

a toy balloon with the word "thought" written upon it ( s o

that the owner of s u c h "Pataphysical Hardware might

drarnatize the act of "pataphysics itself by inserting the
inflated balloon into a headband, literally producing a
comic-strip thought-bubble thst is in turn destroyed through

the use of an accompanying "thought suppressant"--a pin).

Such an allegorical destruction of reason characterizes the
whimsy of what McCaffery might cal1 a "'pataphysicalized
(f)unctionW (1980:12)--an exercise in "FUTILITY, which,
expressed as F t UTILITY becomes that[...]which

LETTER BEYOND UTILITY" (12).

is ONE

The letter "Fu symbolizes the

excess of anomalous exception--"the play of FREEDOM[ . . . ]

WITHIN FUNCTION" (12):

ie. what supplements the "unction"

of an otherwise reassuring, but inhibiting, purpose.

Rational Geomancu
-

Canadian "Pataphysics suggests that the mythomania of

thematic thinkers is a kind of unconscious 'pataphysics that

takes place in what Wurstwagen calls "the oscillating noplace of speculative geology" (1980:150).

Wershler-Henry

191
observes that such paleology represents a "lexical chain
that runs through the strata of Csnadian "Pataphysics like a
vein of precious m e t a l , linking disparate elements in
intriguing ways" (68).

"Pataphysics swerves away from the

royal science of geology toward the nomad science of

geognosy-imagining
national geography:

a rational geomancy that can oppose a

"[w]e

mean by Rational Geomancy the

acceptance of a multiplicity of means[

. . . ]to

reorganize

those energy patterns we perceive in literature," and "[bly

eneras pattern we mean that configuration of discharges[ . . . ]
arising from[

...]engagement

with a text" (TRG 1992:153).

Geomancy norrnally involves an art of divination by

interpreting the signs of the earth, its telluric r h y t h m
and tectonic stresses.

Such a discipline involves a

realignment of topographies.

Parts are arranged to produce

ley lines of force; cracks are read as fault lines in a

form.

To read is a seismic act that makes a schiz, a shift,

in the relation o f t h e s e parts to each other, either fusing

them together or rending them apart.

To be a rational

geomancer is to apply this mode1 of reading, not only to the

land (the as is of the ontic), but also to a text (the as if

of the semic):

"the geomantic view of literature sees

interpretation as any system of alignment" (TRG 1992:153).

A rational geomancer uses 'pataphysics to rechart the fault

192
1 ines that separate reason f rom unreason , realigning the
nationalist cartography of both a t e r r a i n and its culture.

Canadian "Pataphysics suggests that rational geomancy

deploys the exception of the clinamen in order to r e a d
a ~ a i n s tthe arain:

ie. such geomancy i n v o l v e s a radicalized

realignment in the very idea of geomancy itself.

Whereas a

thematic pedagogue (such as Atwood or F r y e ) interprets

sovereign geography as a metaphysical cipher for a mythic
memory (believing such a "myth" to be true), a rational
geomancer interprets memory itself as a 'pataphysical cipher

for an imaginary landscape (believing the "true" to be a

myth).

What Truhlar calls "psychopaleontology" refers to

this geomantic principle of memory:

societies[

"the theory that

...~unconsciously determine[ . . . )theirl...

biological destinies through the procreative force o f t h e i r

languages" ( 1 9 8 5 : [ 2 1 ) .

Such a mnemonic paradigm regards

culture as nothing more than a geographic simulacrum.

Wurstwagen, f o r example, indulges i n 'pataphysical

archaeology by misreading a Muskokan watertower as a Yucatan
skytemple, "as if the architecture [has] framed a discourse

in which stone [ i s ] speaking to stone without the clumsy

intermediary of the human mind" (1980:148).

Wurstwagen

misreads the evidence of the structure in order to argue

that historians have misread the structure of evidence

itself.

Canadian history has occulted its potential for the

occulting of Canadian history.

The very "mytho-

bastardization" (1980:144) that he vilifies in others, he

practices himself--but

only t o imply that al1 such

standardized knowledge is bastardized knowledge.

The

clinamen in the form of his argument parallels the clinamen

in the form of the ziggurat:
telluric rhyrnel

...]and

"a dominant aesthetic[ . . . ]of

energic clinamen" (145).

Wurstwagen argues that the absence of writing on this

ancient obelisk stems from a stone taboo, "the strict
injuncture that no man shall write upon the stone-that-isalready written" ( 1980: 149).

Unlike any other petroglyphic

civilization, this bizarre culture does not write messages

upon the rock, but reads messages into the rock.

The

archaeologist plots the evolution of an aboriginal

settlement from a reading culture (that is agraphie) to a
writing culture (that is dyslexic).

Al1 writing emerges

from this functional illiteracy o n l y as a kind of occluded

vagrancy-s

"topographie cipher" ( 1 5 3 ) that acts as a

palirnpsest, mimicking the writing in the granite, while

deviating from the writing in the granite.

Al1 writing

becomes a "vacuscript" (153)--not an absence of writing so

much as a writing of absence.

194
Canadian "Pataphysicians suggest that such a vacuscript
coincides with 'pataphysics itself, insofar as its imaginary
solutions code their own existence into the form of their
own non-existence.

Such a fantastic portrait of a Meso-

American past in effect p r o v i d e s a satirical a l l e g o r y for

Anglo-Canadian life--a culture that has also practiced its
own absurd version of the stone taboo:

at first, the

culture only reads other books while its own books go

unwritten; then later, the culture writes its own books

which in turn go unread.

The 'petaphysical taboo of this

regional mythology parodies the metaphysical dream of a

national narrative.

The v a c u s c r i p t may have no readership--

but (as McCaffery suggests), "[wlhen the book is closed, it

becomes the SPECULATIVE TEXT imagined and written outside of

an actual writing" (1980:12).

Canadisn "Pataphysics parodies the exotic status of

Canada--the otherness of what Baudrillard might cal1 the
phantasie of Patagonia:

"[tlhe disappearance of the

Indians ,-your own disappearance, that of al1 culture, al1

landscape, in the bleakness of your mists and ice" (1993b:
149).

Baudrillard argues that , for such geographic

dispersion, "[tlhe last word here is that it is better to

put an end to a process of creeping disappearance (ours) by

means of a l i v e sojourn i n a visible form o f disappearance"

--" [ tlhat is why 'Patagonia' goes so well with

'Pataphysics,' which is the science of imaginary solutions"

(149).

Canadian "Pataphysics performs an agonistic

spectacle, responding to the disappearance of Patagonis w i t h

a hyperbole of its own disappearance, as if "laIll

translations into action are imaginary solutions" ( 1 4 9 ) .

L i k e the F u t u r i s t s and the Oulipians, the

"Patsphysicians prefer the ludic speculation of the as i f to

the nomic articulation of the as is.

They strive to create

what McCaffery might cal1 a "'PATATEXT" (13)--a kind of

vacuscript , whose reading eludes the instrumentalism o f an
imperial semantic by putting the notion of play itself into
play.

Such a 'patatextual sensibility characterizes the

nomadic studies of "pataphysicians, who resort to the tropes

of the anomalos, the s y z y g i a , and the clinamen, in order t o

create t h e i r own forms of satirical criticism (be it the

probable svstems of Nichol, the perseus pro-jects of
McCaffery, or the n a t u r a l histories of Dewdney).

A s Dewdney

might imply, s u c h criticism reveals that "[tlhe poet

the same vanguard of research as physics, molecular

chemistry, and pure mathematics" (1980b:Zl).

l i s ] in

Probable Ssstems

Nichol defies the imperial paradigm of paleology in

order t o propose his own 'pataphysical archaeology about the
Canadian f rontier.
( rather than

Nichol w i l f u l l y misreads the mathema

the poiesis) of historiographie interpretation

in order to e x t r a c t an improbable secret from a geological

syntax,

For N i c h o l , al1 of history becomes an imaginary

solution to the millenary problems of memory, and despite

the ironic title of his "probable systems," such a

pathological hermeneutics results in the most "improbable"

of paradigms--a k i n d of mathetic ~ e m a t r i a , its tone both

scientific and cabalistic a t the same time.

Science

suggests t h a t what i s probable coincides with what is most

provable, and indeed the probable systems are staged as
?t

proofs," but in terms that cal1 to mind, not only an

algebraic syllogism, but also the idea of a "rough draft."

Nichol argues that his probable systems constitute a

set of preliminary experiments for a possible science, whose
nomad research defies the prejudices of royal theories:

" there are those who[

. . .)wish

to suppress this l i n e o f

research e v e n as there are others who wish to dismiss it

thru ridicule" ( 1 9 9 0 : 2 8 ) .

Such "rough drafts" are probable

( i n a "pataphysical s e n s e ) not because they can be p r o v e n ,

but b e c a u s e they c a n be probed.

systems.

They are "probe-able"

They m a i n t a i n a formal r i g o u r despite their sober

whimsy, since they all express a hypothetical r e a s o n for

their 'pataphysical design.

Like nurnber theory, which often

reveals uncanny patterns in mathematical correlations, the

probable systems reveal 'pataphysical coincidences in a

lexical field.

Such proof s systematically generate

alternative insights and informative surprises.

Nichol repeats the project of Oulipo, using a mathetic

axiology in order to suggest that a formula can provide a
ternplate f o r linguistic structures .(

Nichol demonstrates,

for e x a m p l e , that each letter can become a variable for the

value of its position in the alphabet, just as each word can

in turn becorne a relation for the sum of these v a l u e s :

hence, the word "faith" c a n be expressed as the operation

"6 + 1 t 9

+ 20 + 8 , " whose total value,

expressed as the operation "8

15 + 16

"44," c a n be
S''--the

cipher for

the word "hope" (1985:48). The "pataphysical unlikelihood

that two-words of equal value might also be s y n o n y m o u s
(proving mathematically, for example, that "faith" does
indeed equate with "hope") can only lend credence to o u r

"faith" that, behind the uncanniness of coincidence, there

probably exists the secret agenda of a forma1 system.5

198

Nichol deploys such a " p a t s p h y s i c a l c r y p t o g r a p h y in

o r d e r t o suggest t h a t just as t h e numbers 1 t o 9 i n base 10
c a n be recombined to express any number beyond t h e number 9 ,
so also can t h e l e t t e r s A to 2 in "base a l p h a b e t " (1990:99)
be recombined t o e x p r e s s a n y l e t t e r beyond t h e l e t t e r Z .
J u s t as t h e standard number 9 m i g h t e q u a l 1 4 i n base 5 , so
a l s o might t h e s t a n d a r d l e t t e r 1 equal AD i n base E.

Such a

' p a t a p h y s i c a l m a t h e m a t i c s i r n p l i e s t h a t t e x t s d o n o t transmit
m e s s a g e s so much as encode the value for some h y p o t h e t i c a l
l e t t e r ( w h i c h i s i t s e l f some a s t r o n o r n i c a l number) f a r beyond

t h e l i m i t s o f the s t a n d a r d alphabet:

"Remembrances O f

Thinas Fast could be considered t h e complex expression of a

single letter an u n i m a g i n a b l e distance beyond A" (1990:106).
L i k e a numeral s e r i e s , every l e x i c a l s e r i e s encodes a

specific position w i t h i n a continuum o f i n f i n i t e anagrams. 6

Nichol deploys the t a c t i c s of such a " p a t a p h y s i c a l

mathematics i n o r d e r t o perform his own genre of speculative
archaeology--a weird genre t h a t i m a g i n e s an historical

c o n s p i r a c y o f mnemonic oddities:

for exemple, Nichol

m i s r e a d s a roadrnap p r i n t e d o n a c o u r t e s y p l a c e m a t from a
m o t e l i n Winnipeg, interpreting the c h a r t as a n a r r a y o f
" a l p h a b e t i c routings w i t h i n w h i c h messages are contained"
( 1990 :25 )

.'

Nichol d a i m s that t h e roadinap d e p i c t s t h e

a r c h a e o l o g i c a l r u i n s o f alphabetical sites, e a c h of w h i c h

199
provides evidence for the existence of a Manitoba Alphabet
Cult--an

a n c i e n t culture that has encoded ciphers into t h e

terrain in order to produce a mnemonic "landuagetfof

'pataphysical portmanteaux (1993:75)--messages to be
interpreted in the future by a society that has learned to
use the avant-garde pseudo-science of rational geomancy.

Nichol argues that the place-names along the ley-lines

of highways form homophonie sentences t h a t encrypt multiple
messages:

for exarnple, "Erikson rackham onanole wasagaming"

( a sequence of villages) becomes " ~ i rsticks on a rock hum

an old W as a gaming" (1993:75).

Such a "doubling of

messages" ( 7 7 ) (through semantic conflation), with its

"wrinklings of meaning" ( 8 3 ) (through syntactic repetition),

can supposedly preserve the maximum amount of data in the
m i n i m u m length of word so t h a t the Manitoba Alphabet

Cult might e n s u r e that at least some of its m e s s a g e s can

survive against the erosion of history:

"it is not chance,

o r mere whimsy, that [hasl produced these town names, but a

system of prodded & forced responses undoubtedly much lke

the systems [that] magicians u s e to force us to pick the
book [ t h a t ] they want u s t o p i c k " (1993:78).

Nichol writes that, for such a culture, "the alphabet

[ h a s ] a v i s i b l e existence in t h e world," and "the feu proofs

[that] we see in the present (alphabet-shaped r o c k s &

plants[.

. .] ,

etc.

r e f e r e n c e a richer[.

. . Ipast"

(Writers

34)--a past that provides a mnemonic allegory for the poetic

legacy of Canada itself:

"[tlhere was once a country in

which each new thought was seen as demanding a new sign,

"but "[f Jinally there were so many signs that[ , ] tho one
spent a lifetime one could not learn them all," and "th0
disciples faithfully wrote down new signs as they occurred,
they were no longer sure if they were truly new since al1
[of] t h a t could no longer be known, & even unfamiliar truth
dazzled because it seemed new" (1993:126-127).

For Canada,

genuine novelty is h a r d l y ever appreciated; instead, an old

m y t h i s al1 too often misconstrued as a new idea.

Nichol strives to lampoon this mistake (endemic among

thematic scholars), doing so by arguing, not that the land
determines the text, but that the text is itself a land--a

land, whose interzone is interpreted according t o a

preconceived epistemology.

Such an exercise constructs a

false origin, a "realphabett' (1980b:42), whose ironic series

contains a "SECRET NARRATIVE" ( 4 3 ) , a mythic cipher:
V)

"(A ->

= X " (43)--a formula, whose structure suggests that, no

mstter what the order of the alphabet, its forma1 s e r i e s is

always "equivalent" to some variable of t h e unknown.

Al1

the probable s y s t e m s probe the domains of this unknown,

201
suggesting that to expand t h e field of its veritability is
t o expand the field of its possibilities.

The search f o r an

origin becomes a paranoid activity that ultimstely creates

the memory of its own origin. 7

Perseus P r o - j e c t s

McCaffery a l s o defies the imperial paradigrn o f

paleology in order to propose his own 'pataphysical
archaeology a b o u t the Canadian f rontier

McCaf fery o f f e r s a

paranoid criticism, extracting a secret history from a known

geology b y studying a "TRILOBITE ALPHABET," whose
paleoalvphs require a kind of mnemonic literacy ( 1981 :4 - 5 ) :
"[c]onstructed is an analogical framework of great
complexity with a method (the operating 'pataphysics) based

largely upon a posited similaritg in f e a t u r e s b e t w e e n

language and geology and intended to function translatively

as a modifying instrument upon the data of experience"

( 1986:190).

History, for McCaf fery, provides an imaginary

solution-to the millenary problems of memory, permitting

the culture of one extinct species to be read back through

the devices of y e t another species.

M c C a f fery conf ronts the petrifying mythomania o f

Canadian scholars by performing a swerve upon their own

thematized investment in the c l a s s i c a l tradition of

mythology itself:

" [ i l f nothing else the Perseus Project

[opens] the curtains on a new philosophic theatre in which

the Medusa story can be re-staged; where Perseus might
return the same prince as before and stand with face averted
rom the gorgonU--"[b]ut this time his shining shield
[becomes) the blank pages of a voluminous[

...]dictionary,

and the image reflected there Lis] his own" (1981:9-10).

The geological misprision of such a myth opens the way for a

'pataphysical hermeneutics that reflects, not upon, but
aaainst, the bestoned image of its own unveiled truth,
treating "<beneath' as 'behind' and 'behind' as an
ever-recurring series of self-reflective mirrors" ( 1 )

McCaffery suggests that a fossil embodies such a

Medusan thought, its message written by g e o l o g y into the

pagina1 stratum of a lithic manual:

"[t]he two images of

fossil and strata are 'pataphysical spatializers t h a t serve

to distance language and place it under observation"

(1986:192).

Each fossil, l i k e a word, i s a blank space, in

which the pretext of its meaning depends upon the context of

its reading:

"[t]o see a word as fossil is to see a

signifier detached from a signified" (191 ) .

Each fossil is

a thought that has lost the substance of its referent.'

has become evacuated and dessicated,

It

It is "the linguistic

s i g n in its state o f non-signification"

Dewdney might suggest):

(191)--or (as

"[meanings] are like the soft parts

of a decaying fish, they rot away and leave only the

skeleton to be preserved as a fossil" (l98Ob:23).

McCaffery suggests that, like a word, such a rock holds

a position within a g r i d of forms-a

tabula, created by the

horizontal axis of spatial ordering ( i e . the line) and the

vertical axis of temporal layering (ie. the page):

"[fjossil relates t o stratum as 'parole1 relates to

' langue' , as syntagm to paradigm"

( 1986 :191 )

Language is

used to create a metaphor that converts the diachronic mode

of l i n g u i s t i c temporality into, what McCaffery calls, "the

synchronic form of a 'pataphysical structure:

epitomizes this transformation" (192).

the fossil

S u c h a 'pataphysical

paleontology develops a conceit that language is itself a

subgenre of geology:

langue, like the mass o f the earth, is

a stratum, a tier in an "articulated surface" ( N S ) , just a s

parole, like a node in the earth, i s a plexum, a fold in a

"surfaced a r t i c u l a t i o n t t

M c C a f fery develops a

192 )

' pataphysical metaphor that calls

to mind the paleological imagery of Deleuze and Guattari,

who argue that language involves a process of s t r a t i fication:

each molecule is sorted into layered forms ( a

204

s e d i m e n t ) , a n d t h e s e l a y e r e d forms are then f o l d e d i n t o a

molarity (an aggregate) (1987:40).

T h e two modes o f t h i s

"double a r t i c u l a t i o n " a r e mutually r e l a t i v e :

"[tlhey not

o n l y Vary from o n e s t r a t u m t o a n o t h e r , but i n t e r m i n g l e , a n d

w i t h i n t h e same s t r a t u m m u l t i p l y a n d d i v i d e a d i n f i n i t u m "

When the p r o c e s s of s t r a t i f y i n g n i n e r a l s becomes

(44)

r e f l e x i v e , i t makes a p r o t e i n ; when t h e p r o c e s s o f
s t r a t i f y i n g p r o t e i n s becomes reflexive, 3t rnakes a c e l l u l e ;
a n d when t h e p r o c e s s o f stratifying cellules becomes
r e f l e x i v e , it makes a t h o u g h t .
f o r a phrase;

No f o s s i l i s s i m p l y a f i g u r e

instead, every fossil c a n become a p h r a s e .

McCaffery i m a g i n e s a k i n d o f D a r w i n i a n p h i l o s o p h y ,
r e m i n i s c e n t o f Dawkins, who a r g u e s t h a t l a n g u a g e i s n o t h i n g
b u t a n e c o l o g y , i n w h i c h m e m e s , o r i d e a s ( s u c h a s t h e idea
o f memes), c a n proliferate i n a v i r o l o g i c a l manner ( 1 9 ) .
Language is just t h e l a t e s t update o f a machine that h a s
f o u n d i t s own d i v e r s e methods t o replicate i t s e l f ( b e i t
through geoseismic f o s s i l i z a t i o n , biogenetic hybridization,
o r semiologic symbolization--three

processes which e s t a b l i s h

a kind o f c o n j u g a l r e l a t i o n , a p a l e o s e x u a l i t v , between r o c k ,

life, and w o r d ) .
tropes:

Such diverse m e t h o d s are n o t m u t u a l

t h e y do n o t mimick e a c h o t h e r s o much as m u t a t e

i n t o each o t h e r .

As M c C a f f e r y r e m a r k s ,

" l a n g u a g e [is] a

s e x u a l s y s t e m e n t i r e l y a l i e n t o t h e human species, a

paleozoic conspiracy, a saturated networkl

...]that

uses man

far more than man uses it" (1981:75).1O

McCaffery imagines that, like genetic fossils, which

have evolved through many different phases and many

different strata, language itself resembles a process of

anagrammatic recombination, in which "alphabetic
chromosomes" (1981:8) mate with each other, articulating
themselves within one code, infiltrating themselves into
another code, then sedimenting themselves within a new code:
"[wlhereas fossil production takes place over millions o f
years inside the framework of geologic time, fossil reproduction occurs more rapidly within active linguistic

time" ( 7 ) , becoming a global tactic of replacement that

begins to substitute everything for itself--or as Dewdney
suggests, "[plarticle/ by particle the solid reality that

composed the/ allegorical ground he stood on is replaced by/

fantasies and lies. (fossilization)" ( 1 9 7 5 ~ 8 7 )11
.

McCaffery implies that fossils eliminate any grounds

for the truth of meaning:

"ftlhe fossil 'sentence'[

...]

answers a non-existent question and hence is by nature

'pataphysical" (1986:199).

Whenever " w e dig deeper into the

etymological strata for the key term:

fossil from fodere:

to d i g as towards the latent truth and/or the latent lie,"

206
we discover that "[tlhe tone of this mendacity within[ ...]

'pataphysics instigates a confrontation with the linguistic

form that carries it" (1986:199).

Such paleology performs

an act of genetic mutation, recombining disparate elements

into anomalous equations:

"[wlith these n e w awarenesses we

can only enter into a philosophy of the unthinkable, where

meaning is finally detsched from the human mind and where
words no longer mean anything" (1981:9)--instead, they
become a vacuscript of imaginary alphabets.

Natural Histories

538.

Dewdney also defies the imperial paradigm of paleology

in order to propose his own 'pataphysical archaeology about

the Cansdian landscape.

Dewdney offers a paransid

criticism, extracting a historic secret from a geologic

syntax, by studying an invisible catalogue, "a heraldry in
creation unseen" (1991:20), "a semiology we can just barely
comprehend" (25)--the "inventory [of] a personal, r e g i o n a l
identity-directly informed by natural history" (43)

History, for Dewdney, is also an imaginary solution to the

millenary problems of memory, parodying two textual
traditions simultaneously, operating not only within, but
also against, these traditions:

first, the romantic

tradition that depicts nature in terms of a sublime

pantheism; second, the scientific tradition that depicts

nature in terms of a mundane positivism. 12

Dewdney understands that natural history has typically

restricted itself to a taxonornic continuum, into which al1
nature may be presumably fitted without distortion.

Nature

is read as a hierarchical list of species, a great ladder in

which each rung is separated from its neighbour by only the
smallest possible difference:

a segmented continuum. 13

Dewdney itemizes such a "radiant inventory" ( 1988: 1 1 )

but

unlike traditional taxonomies, his own blazon of nature is

itemized without apparent categories as though to preserve
the implicit randomness found in nature rather than impose
an explicit lawfulness upon s u c h a nature.

Such a project

s i m p l y follows the clinamen in the traject of its own

thinking on the assumption that "[tlhe random is our

existential dilemma to a certain extent, the basis of
everything, the background hum of the real" (1990:85).

Dewdney strives to perform a clinamen upon such an

onornastic endeavour by resorting to the kind of automatic
scription that can supposedly access the racial mernory of

the unconscious:

"the voice of the land and the creatures

themselves, speaking from the inviolate fortress of a

primaeval history" (1983:8).

Dewdney resorts to the

'pataphysics of such automatism in order to transforrn the

surrealist psychology of the irrational into the futuristic
technology of the surrational.

Giving themselves up to what

Dewdney calls remote control ( 1 9 7 5 : 9 2 ) ,

"pataphysicians

might eventually eliminate t h e interference of the self in

order to become receptive to the dictation of a machinic

alterity:

#'[t]he radio telescope becomes a mode1 o f t h e

bi-conscious interface between 'the mind' and signals from

the ' o u t s i d e ' which t h e poet receives" (1980b:20).

Dewdney goes on t o use such "pataphysics to parody the

mythomania of Canadian criticism by arguing that cultural
identity a r i s e s 'pataphysically from the mnemonic paradigm
of a geology:

" [ a l s there is/ a water table/ there is also/

a memory table" (1973:[17])--a register punctuated by

"unknowns which, however perfectly dissected, never yield
their identity" ( 165) ) .

S u c h a culture occupies "two

worlds--the one diurnal men know and that other world where
lunar mottled eels stir like dreams in shallow forest w a t e r "
( 1 9 8 2 : 1 5 1 ; moreover, natural history can document the shift

from one world to the other, replacing the ontic with the
semic, through an oneiric process of transmutative

fossilization:

"[alllowing b o t h [of] these mechanisms to

continue operating , we slowly remove and replace theiyr

parts with corresponding and interlocking nothings" (15).

209

Dewdney suggests that this dreamworld, this Traumwelt,

of automatic scription can be realized through the
hypothetical future of "Manual Precognition" (McFadden 93).
Dewdney mimics the evolution of a genetic message by writing
some ten pages, then erasing a few parts, whereupon he fills

the resultant void w i t h the continuing text so thst the

leading edge of the writing is carried back through what has
already been written:

"[tlhe first sentence carries within

it the blueprint for the whole subsequent work, much as an

embryo contains the code for the a d u l t , " but "[ulnlike an
uncovered law[ . . . ] , the progeny of the original sentence can
mutate & r e t u r n to the site of the inception to alter it"

(1986:73).

Such a reflexive teleology p r o v i d e s an allegory

for the recursive evolution, not only o f a literary text,

but also of the sentient mind itself.

Dewdney resorts to such a biological figurality in

order to argue that language itself has taken on a vitality
of its own, living in parasitic symbiosis with us, trading

its reproduction for our consciousness:

"[llanguage can be

r e g a r d e d as a psychic parasite which has genetically

earmarked a section of the cortex for its own accommodation"

(1986:59), utilizing humans as neural slaves in its own

sentience, and "[tlhe intact survive1 o f this intelligence
is threatened by one thing only, and that is the discovery

210
and subsequent exploration of its plane of existence by
ourselves, its human host" (1980b:25).

T h i s 'pataphysical

hypothesis is complicated by the fact that, just as there is

a parasite in us, there is also a parasite in language,

"it is the

because language in effect feeds upon itself:

mind/ e a t i n g itself" (1980a:12).

Dewdney suggests that, like al1 machines, language is

itself cyborganic, its operation regulated by a Governor and
a Parasite.

The Governor is a mechanical device that

r e m l a t e s a m a c h i n i c function; t h e Parasite is a cyborganic

device that sabotages a machinic function. l4

The Governor

and the Parasite are in a sense both parasitic

insofar as

they disrupt a process), but whereas the Governor directs a

flow toward a homeostatic lirnit ( a repetition w i t h i n

controls), the Parasite directs a flow toward an

homeorrhetic excess ( a cornpetition beyond c o n t r o l ) .

The

Governor unveils the power of language over us; the Parasite

reveals the power of language in us:
adamant limit beyond which[...]it

" [ t J h e Governor is an

is impossible to

conceptualize" (1980b:25), while " [ t J h e Parasite allows the

poet to function beyond his own capability" ( 3 1 ) .

Dewdney imagines that "pataphysics is itself a

parasitic discourse that might subvert the piety o f a

211
gubernatory metaphysics:

"the notion of a supreme being is

a renouncement of the human miracle" ( 1 9 8 7 9 2 1 , and "the

correction for [such] piety is natural history" (1982:lO). 15

The exceptional unlikelihood of life itself already endows
reality with a mystery so wondrous that it requires no
recourse to a domain beyond thought in order to render it
even more wondrous:

"[ulltimately our cosmos functions as

an inhuman, yet intimate, phenomenology to which we impute

deistic attributes because we cannot conceive of anything so

subtle[ . . . ]operating without consciousness as we know it"

(1991:43).

The universe puts itself at the infinite

disposa1 of an insatiable curiosity, in which every irnagined

solution opens up a new set of 'pataphysical speculations.

The Everywhere Science

Canadian "Pataphysics operates upon the assumption that

reality itself comprises a manifold universe of referential
uncertainty, what Dewdney might cal1 a "handfed illusion"

(1980a:68), in which "it [is] completely impossible to

systematically reason if we [have] awakened from our dreams
on a collective or individual basis" (1973:[52]).

Canadian

"Pataphysics presumes that reality does not exist per se,

but is created by us to be studied by us; hence, such an

avant-garde pseudo-science cannot regard the reality of

Canada i t s e l f as anything more than a superstitious

hallucination (despite the best efforts of thematic scholars
to prove otherwise); instead, such an avant-garde pseudo-

science performs a clinamen upon the mythomania of

archetypes in order to show that such tropes only represent
imaginsry solutions to t h e problem of cultural identity.

Canadian "Pataphysics attempts to perceive the world

only through the i r o n i c window of what N i c h o l might cal1 a

CRITICAL FRAME OF REFERENCE--a c h a r sheet of acetate that

permits t h e user to reach "new levels of philosophical and
philological awareness" (1993:123) since t h e u s e r can simply
place t h e FRAME ( a F i x e d Reference and Meaning Explainer)

o v e r an area o f text in order to respond to skeptical

inquiries about the context for an a c a d e m i c argument,

The

FRAME differs from less expensive models sold by less

r e p u t a b l e s t o r e s because t h e frame lacks "the now o b s o l e t e

black border whose funereal aspect properly announces the

intellectual d e a t h of its users" (123); instead, the FRAME
has clear edges that become invisible st a distance so that.

in the end, "the whole world fits inside the frame" ( l Z 3 ) ,

the real coinciding with its "pataphysical perspectivism.

Canadian "Pataphysics provides the 1at.est d e t o u r in an

historical trajectory that develops the 'pataphysics of

213
Jarry according to three successive, cyborganic modes:

machinic, the mathetic, and the mnemonic.

the

Jarry has

inspired a century of experimentations, in which

'pataphysicians attempt to imagine the as if of a nomadic
science, whose sophistries might draw attention to the
poetics of a neglected exception, be it the excess of the
anomalos, the chiasm of the s y z s a i a , or the swerve of the
clinamen.

"Our hope is a faint one," avers the Toronto

Research Group:

"that others will follow and in following

lead to the collection of the neglected and (who knows, as a

poetic corollary, the neglect o f the collected) those whom
we have failed to remember or were forced to ignore, the
already passed and the yet to corne" (TRG 1992:303).

Wershler-Henry observes, moreover, that even this

historical trajectory of exception must i t s e l f undergo its
own form of revision, disrupting the normalization of
'pataphysical abnormalities so that "each generation of
"Pataphysicians must anticipate its own irrelevance" (76).

Like metaphysics before it ,

' pataphysics

has already begun

to establish a tradition of millenary problems, for which

only a metaleptic discipline ( a 'pataphysics about

'pataphysics) might provide the as i f of an imaginary

solution.

As Jarry observes:

"[wle too shall become

solemn, fat, and Ubu-like and shall publish extremely

214

classical books," and "another lot of young people will

appear, and consider us completely out of date, and they

will write ballads to express their loathing of us, and that

is j u s t the way things should always bel' (1965:85).

Notes to Chapter 5

l ~ r o n i c a l l ~the
,
openness of the quotation mark
in Canadian "Pataphysics c a l l s to mind t h e openness of the
e l l i p s i s marks in the last line of Doctor Faustroll:
"Pataphysics is the science.

. ..

"

(Jarry 1965 :2 5 6 )

The

original sentence in French can be translsted as either a

completed thought or a suspended thought (as i f t o suggest
that such a science marks the unfulfilled expectation of a
solution, whose completion occurs only in the imaginary):

"the irreverence of the common h e r d l

. . . ] sums

up the science

of "Pataphysics in the f o l l o w i n g p h r a s e : " (TRG 1980: 13 )

'~eabershi~
in these imaginary thinktanks is
always virtual:

The Toronto Research Group is comprised o f

McCaffery and Nichol; the Institute for Linguistic

Ontogenetics is comprised of Dean, Truhlar, Riddell, et al;

and the " P a t a p h y s i c a l Hardware Company is comprised of
Nichol alone.

Other organizations i n c l u d e the Institute for

Creative-Misunderstanding, the Institute for Hmmrian

Studies, and the Institute for Applied Fiction, a l 1 o f which
a p p e a r and vanish without warning throughout the recent

legacy of literary r e s e a r c h in Canada,

216

' ~ h e Toronto R e s e a r c h Group studies the anornalaus

potential in the parodic algebra of its own mechanismic
speculation:

relationality ( i n the translating of a text);

sequentiality (in the chronicling of a t e x t ) ; and

theatricality (in the drematizing of a text), etc.

Like the

desiring machines of Deleuze and Guattari, such neglected

subgenres intervene in a flow of data (facilitating it or
debilitating it) in order to reveal that, between writer and
reader, "[tlhere is at a l 1 points a machine that secretes

and a machine that consumes" (TRG 1992:172).

'~ichol imitates the Jarryesque mathematics of

Queneau in order to parody the science of Greimasian

linguistics.

Like an ontogenetic semiotician who uses

"pataphysics to calculate t h e grammatic densities of

language in order to derive their geometric rnorphology
(oblate spheroid for Italian, prolate spheroid for English,
etc.) (TRG 1980:lll-112), Nicha1 attempts to calculate the

qualities of an uttered thought:

its heaviness (1980a:113);

its quickness ( 1 9 9 0 : 34); the full length of its periphery

(1990:16); and the square root of its rationale ( 1 9 8 5 : 8 9 ) .

217
'~ichol even goes so far as to imagine a device
for measuring the signified:

a graduated cylinder, whose

increments are marked off, not with numbers, but with

animals (1985:ISO).

Such a device implies that to impose a

random s y s t e m upon the real by arbitrarily demarcating

differences between signifier and signified only results in
absurdities no less bizarre than an imagistic form of long
division:

for example, a giraffe, a woman, a church, and a

sailboat, when divided by a woman and a sailboat, equals a

cello, a giraffe, and a weathercock, etc. (115).

'~ichol suggests, for example, that the poem

"Translating ~ p o l l i n a i r e " is the 54,786,210,294,570th letter

in such an i n f i n i t e alphabet (1990:112).

To write is to

quote one of the points in this series, and to equate the

set of the alphabet with a set of al1 integers raises
questions about the continuity of such sequences:

"the

concept of whole letter is itself an interesting one[ ...]

s i n c e if you have H &[...II

what are the fractional letters

in between them & what do t h e y express" ( 1 9 8 5 : 8 9 ) ?

We have

no w a y of adequately expressing s u c h improbable exigencies.

218

h h o l p r o v i d e s a " p a t s p h y s i c a l e x p l a n a t i o n of a
weathermap, a r g u i n g that such a chart is not a map o f a
p r o t e a n c l i m a t e , b u t a n a c t of " a l p h a b e t w o r s h i p , " p l o t t i n g
" t h e movement o f g i g a n t i c a i r b o r n e H ' s & L ' s over
c o n t i n e n t a l N o r t h ~ m e r i c a "i n "a time when t h e l e t t e r ( &

hence t h e word) f are] p r e s e n t i n the world as t h i n g , as

v i s i b l e f a c t i n t h e l a n d & air scapes" (Writers 24-25).

The

a l p h a b e t in e f f e c t r e p r e s e n t s t h e r e c o r d , n o t of s p e e c h
i t s e l f , b u t of l i v i n g b e i n g s , s u b l i m e l e t t e r s , now e x t i n c t ,
b u t n e v e r t h e l e s s remembered by a c a b a l o f s e c r e t a g e n t s .

' ~ c ~ f ae rf y a r g u e s t h a t
s o words fossilize" (1986:191):

" j u s t as f o s s i l s v e r b a l i z e
both o f t h e s e " b l i n d forms"

s i g n i f y a n a b s e n c e ( w h i c h h a s i n t u r n corne t o s i g n i f y t h e
e s s e n c e of Canada itself:

its desertedness).

Like f o s s i l s ,

l e t t e r s c o n s t i t u t e a m e t e o r i c d e t r i t u s , whose s e d i m e n t a t i o n
c a n be s t u d i e d by a nomadic science:

"What r e m a i n s a f t e r

e r o s i o n i s o f t e n d e s e r t , and i n d e s e r t o f t e n l i e h i d d e n
important f o s s i l s .

That i s a n a p p e a l i n g n a r r a t i v e o f

sediment-perhaps, b u t one occluding an important f a c t :

to t h e true nomad there is no d e s e r t . "

( T R G 1992:19).

that

219
' ~ e l e u z e and Guattari assert thst

" [tlhe strata

are judgements of God (but the earth[...]constantly

that judgement) (1987:40).

eludes

Stratification is a royal

process of capture that arranges disparate parts into

long-range, large-scale orders of solidity, and t h e s e strata

are always subject t o a nomad process of rupture which

deranges disparate parts into short-range, small-scale

orders of fluidity.

Such "deterritorializationl' not only

generates a new stratum at another level, but also modulates

its own stratum within its level.

" ~ c ~ fery
a f
implies that paleosexual i t y provides
an allegory for an epidemic of accidental coincidence--a
breakdown of postmodern chronology.

Seismological events

recombine fossils, producing anomalous conjugations of

different ternporalities:

"[e]arthquakes[

...)sre

nothing

other t h a n a fossil orgasm recorded upon the chronometric

g r i d of human catastrophe" (1981:4).

The act of

fossilization merely offers a conceit for postmodern

simulation--the substitution of images for things within a
system of synchronistic disappearance.

220

I1~ccafferysuggests that fossilization is simply

a cipher for dissimulation--a hypothesis that c a l l s to mind

Borges, who observes that, to a zoologist like Gosse, a
divinity may have constructed evidence for an infinite p a s t

t h a t appears t o have preceded the moment of creation, but

that has never r e a l l y occurred as an aspect of creation, so
that, w h i l e the evidence of dinosaurs might exist, dinosaurs
themselves have never existed ( 1 9 6 4 : 2 4 ) .

Such a theory o f

the as if implies that humanity might have a p p e a r e d only a

few moments ago w i t h implanted mernories of a fake p a s t .

I 2 ~ e v d n e ysuggests that Canada s u f f e r s from "a

fear of intelligence based on t h e notion o f s dichotomy

between t h e heart and the head as if intelligence had no

heart, therefore to have h e a r t you have t o be dumb"

(1990:88). Dewdney r e p e a t s t h e romantic redaction o f piety,
but w i t h o u t t h e romantic s u s p i c i o n of reason.

He suggests

t h a t an a p o e t i c vision o f nature only increases the f i g u r a 1

a p p e a l of n a t u r e .

The t e x t synthesizes this b i n a r y

opposition by making the scientific seem romantic, while

rnaking the romantic seem scientif ic.

221

l 3 ~ e w d n e yalmost evokes the theories of Foucault,

who argues that n a t u r a l history is a quotidian discourse

that attempts t o decompose, then recompose, its own

language:

" [ i ] t leaps over the everyday vocabulary that

provides it with its immediate ground, and beyond that

ground it searches for that which could have constituted its
raison d'tre; but, inversely, it resides in its entirety in

the area of language, since it is essentially a concerted

use of names and s i n c e its ultimate aim is to give things

their true denomination" (1973:1 6 1 ) .

" ~ h eGovernor represents a restricted econorny of

function and utility (the prosaic boredom of habit and

clichk).

The Parasite represents a generalized economy of

dysfunction and inutility (the poetic freedom of crime and

flair).

A parasite signifies the entropy of a system, the

noise that d e p l e t e s the information from its own scale of

order, but that nevertheless augments the information of a

another scale of order.

A poet disrupts communication, not

simply to break it down, but to make it more complex--to

accentuate the potential for both anomaly and novelty.

15~ewdneys u g g e s t s t h a t n a t u r a l h i s t o r y bears

w i t n e s s t o a supernal grandeur.

Eech book, f o r example,

d e t a i l s t h e account o f a citizen who h a s lived through a

tornado:

"a p r i m a l , s a c r e d e x p e r i e n c e o f [

...]random

v i o l e n c e w - - b u t "a c r u e l t y w i t h o u t m a l i c e derived from an

i m p a r t i a l i t y a t t h e k a r t of nature" (1991:43).

A l 1 such

c a t a s t r o p h e s r e p r e s e n t t h e manifestation o f a l t e r i t y i t s e l f
--the o t h e r n e s s t h a t u n d e r l i e s t h e h i d d e n agenda o f e v e n t s :

"that w h i c h i s most completely out o f c o n t r o l most c l e a r l y

r e v e a l s the workings o f the unseen machinations" (1982:64).

223
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