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

ecause "the pet who writes that which cornes into his
head[. ..lis the slave of otber rules of which he is
ignorant" (~dnabou 1986:41). To explore the rule is to be
emancipated from it by becoming the master of its ~otential
for surprise, whereas to ignore the rule is to be imprisoned
in it by becoming the slave to the reprise of its intention.
Roubaud argues that, to realize the potentiality of
such a radical poetics, "a constraint [is] envisaged only on
the condition that this text contain al1 the possibilities
of the constraint" (95)--which is to say that the constraint
must evoke the entire domain of its own as if:
not an
exemplary sin~ularitv to be repeated, but an imaginary
multiparity to be explored.
Such a literary manifold does
not produce a variation upon its own significant themes so
much as produce an extravagant scheme of variation. What is
potential generates a new process rather than an old
product.
The exception to a rule implies, not a freedom
from, but the outcome of, such a constraint.
The exception
explicates the rule, testing its limits, defying its fields,
forsaking the nomic work of one paradigm for the ludic risk
of another paralogy.
Roubaud argues that the potential of such a constraint
can avoid the imperialism of its own repetition if the