Christian Bök's "'Pataphysics": Analogy

Christian Bök's 'Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science is the CATTt's Analogy instruction.  Bök's study (he refers to it as a survey) clearly intersects with our previous instructions and sets us up for the tale component of our CATTt--Rob Kovitz's Pig City Model Farm.  Pataphysics, Bök states, "represents a supplement to metaphysics, accenting it, then replacing it, in order to create a philosophic alternative to rationalism" (3). The single quote preceding the term "pataphysics" denotes the French influence on pataphysical thinking, and the double quote preceding the term signifies the Canadian influence on pataphysical thinking.

'Pataphysics is speculative, waiting for its chance to happen, as if my accident, in a themic park of scientific conception. (4)

'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. (4)

'Pataphysics valorizes the exception to each rule in order to subvert the procrustean constraints of science. (5)

'Pataphysics refuses to conform to any academic standard: hence, this survey cannot demonstrate that it has learned the lessons of its topic without negotiating a virtually untenable ambiguity between the noetic mandate of scholarship and the poetic license of 'pataphysics. (5)

Buadrillard observes that, for the "[']Pataphysics of the year 2000,' history has accelerated past the escape velocity for reality, moving from the centrifugal gravity of the real into centripetal celerity of the void' ([1992] 1944a, I). Events occur in the null-space of simulation, where '[a]ll metaphysical tension has been dissipated, yielding a [']pataphysical ambiance' ([1983] 1990a, 71). Things succumb to relativity, complexity, and uncertainty, shifting from an absolute state of determinism to a dissolute field of indeterminism. The science of 'pataphysics responds to these absurdities with a genre of science fiction that shows science itself to be a fiction. It narrates not what is, but what might have become. It inhabits the tense of the future perfect, of the post modo--a paradoxical temporality, in which what has yet to happen has already taken place. (8)

Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), the inventor of pataphysics, was a writer best "known for his play Ubu Roi (1896)" ("Alfred Jarry," 2011, par. 1)--a precursor "to the Theatre of the Absurd and the greater surrealist art momvement of the early twentieth century ("Ubu Roi," 2011, par. 1) . Jarry wrote "plays, novels, poetry, esays, and speculative journalism" ("Alfred Jarry," 2011, par. 1). Bök states that Jarry had an "important influence upon the poetic legacy of this century (particularly the Italian Futurists, the French Oulipians, and the Canadian Jarryites).




Bök draws from an incredible range of sources to present the the details of pataphysics and its influence on current thinking. He identifies three declensions of 'pataphysics (these are the names of tropes):

SYZYGIA	The excessive order coming out of chaos.
ANOMALOS	The chiasm between order and chaos.
CLINAMEN	The swerve of chaos breaking away from order.

Bök divides his survey into five topics:

• Science and Poetry
• Millenial ’Pataphysics
• Italian Futurism
• French Oulipianism
• Canadian ’Pataphysics

Of immediate interest to our project are the topics of Italian futurism and French Oulipianism.