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

and ignore the piousness of al1 admonishing truth. The
event foments a revolution in philosophy--a shift away from
the nomic study of what is veritable to a ludic study of
what is possible, as if "every philosophy is by definition a
dialectical game, a Philosophie des Als Ob" (14).
Borges imagines a reality where to imagine a reality
can cause a reality to exist ex nihilo. Each memory of an
object conjures the miracle of an hdn, the replica of a
replica; and yet, " [s] tranger and more pure than any hrh
is, at times, the u" (an ectype without prototype), "the
object produced through suggestion, educed by hope"
(1983: 18) .' Like the tihistas who believe that
"metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature" ( 14), the
narrator of this fantasy pretends to believe in such an
imaginary philosophy, quoting fictitious references to it in
gazettes and treatises. His alternative to metaphysics is
itself an ur because his dream of it has indeed corne true,
not only in his story but also in our world. We too fulfill
this apocalyptic conspiracy by creating, for ourselves, a
world where fantasy has more reality than reality itself.
Postmodernism in fact defines itself in terms of such a
catastrophe.
Philosophy has everywhere begun to threaten
the constraints of both the real and the true in order to