PATAPHYSICS-THE-POETICS-OF-AN-IMAGINARY- SCIENCE_C_Bok

Vaneigem, however, warns us that, because of this
sophistry, "Joe Soap intellectuals, [']pataphysicians[ ...fibandwagon
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, "[ 'plataphysics[
...] 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 account that, like Nietzsche, Jarry does
radicalize philosophy, lampooning pedagogic authority, in
order to foment a spirit of permanent rebellion, be it anti-
bourgeois or anti-philistine.'
My thesis argues that this
apparent strategy of "indifference" in 'pataphysics merely
serves to satirize the impartiality of sciexe itself.
'Pataphysics refuses to conform to any academic
standard: hence, this survey cannot demonstrate that it has
learned the lessons of its topic 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 offer a Wunderkammern of
literary teratism, cataloguing the scientific exceptions to
the given noms of poetry in order to create an absurd