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

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1 ines that separate reason f rom unreason , realigning the
nationalist cartography of both a terrain and its culture.
Canadian "Pataphysics suggests that rational geomancy
deploys the exception of the clinamen in order to read
a~ainst the arain:
ie. such geomancy involves a radicalized
realignment in the very idea of geomancy itself. Whereas a
thematic pedagogue (such as Atwood or Frye) interprets
sovereign geography as a metaphysical cipher for a mythic
memory (believing such a "myth" to be true), a rational
geomancer interprets memory itself as a 'pataphysical cipher
for an imaginary landscape (believing the "true" to be a
myth).
What Truhlar calls "psychopaleontology" refers to
this geomantic principle of memory: "the theory that
societies[ ... ~unconsciously determine[ ...) theirl... 1
biological destinies through the procreative force of their
languages" (1985:[21).
Such a mnemonic paradigm regards
culture as nothing more than a geographic simulacrum.
Wurstwagen, for example, indulges in 'pataphysical
archaeology by misreading a Muskokan watertower as a Yucatan
skytemple, "as if the architecture [has] framed a discourse
in which stone [is] speaking to stone without the clumsy
intermediary of the human mind" (1980:148). Wurstwagen
misreads the evidence of the structure in order to argue