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

sign in its state of non-signification" (191)--or (as
Dewdney might suggest):
"[meanings] are like the soft parts
of a decaying fish, they rot away and leave only the
skeleton to be preserved as a fossil" (l98Ob:23).
McCaffery suggests that, like a word, such a rock holds
a position within a grid of forms-a
tabula, created by the
horizontal axis of spatial ordering (ie. the line) and the
vertical axis of temporal layering (ie. the page):
"[fjossil relates to stratum as 'parole1 relates to
' langue' , as syntagm to paradigm" ( 1986 : 191 ) . Language is
used to create a metaphor that converts the diachronic mode
of linguistic temporality into, what McCaffery calls, "the
synchronic form of a 'pataphysical structure:
the fossil
epitomizes this transformation" (192). Such a 'pataphysical
paleontology develops a conceit that language is itself a
subgenre of geology:
langue, like the mass of the earth, is
a stratum, a tier in an "articulated surface" ( NS), just as
parole, like a node in the earth, is a plexum, a fold in a
"surfaced articulationtt ( 192 ) .
McCaf fery develops a ' pataphysical metaphor that calls
to mind the paleological imagery of Deleuze and Guattari,
who argue that language involves a process of stratification:
each molecule is sorted into layered forms (a