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

surprise, augmenting its declensions of exception through
the machinic paralogy of shock, noise, and speed.
Marinetti
resorts to 'pataphysics in order to revise 'pataphysics,
doing so in order to imagine the as if of s future in which
poetry can instigate a science, whose "lyric equations"
(1991:lll) might in turn explain poetry itself. The Italian
Futurists are among the first to posit such a grammatical
algebra, just as the French Oulipians later posit their own
procedural calculus, but whereas the Italian 'pataphysicians
do so by referring to the hardware of a technological form
(ie. the play of concrete machines), the French
'pataphysicians do so by referring to the software of a
numerological form (ie. the play of abstract machines).
Futurism ultimately postulates an applied science of
poetic theories, in which poetry itself is an accidental
instrument for a scientific experiment.
Rossiyansky
observes that, in ef fect, Futurism dreams of "a future
era[ ...] where scientific laboratories are run by astrologers
and chiromantists" (143)--'pataphysical sophisters that
parody metaphysical physicists.
Graal-Arelsky observes in
turn that, for Futurism, "[slcience turns out to be
relative, like everything else" since "[tlhe world which
rules in our intellect is not real, but imaginary" (Ill),
emerging, in effect, from our own 'pataphysical