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

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 of either Fascism or
Communism (even 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 clinamen
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 as 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
to inspire the Russian Formalists (whose science is based
upon a Futurist precursor), just as the Russian Formalists
go on to inspire the French Structuralists (whose science is
based upon a Formalist precursor). For Futurism, these
ironic cycles of recursive influence merely comprise an