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

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 is 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 an alibi for replicative
engineering. Whether electric or artistic, the shock (la
scossa) generated by such 8 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 vitreal diptych, The Bride
Strip~ed Bare 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
by the combustion of an ecstatic gasoline); the lower panel