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

122
it is one of the forms of collective creativity and may thus
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
letter Z depicting "the equality of the angle of incidence
to 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 'pataphysics, insofar as he exalts la
velocitk of the clinamen and the highspeed collision of its
bachelor machines:
"[olne must kneel before the whirling
speed of- a gyroscope compass:
20,000 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 per~etuum mobile calls to mind the
physick-stick in Jarry or the turning-bar in Lyotard-