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

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'~he Toronto Research Group studies the anornalaus
potential in the parodic algebra of its own mechanismic
speculation: relationality (in the translating of a text);
sequentiality (in the chronicling of a text); and
theatricality (in the drematizing of a text), etc.
Like the
desiring machines of Deleuze and Guattari, such neglected
subgenres intervene in a flow of data (facilitating it or
debilitating it) in order to reveal that, between writer and
reader, "[tlhere is at al1 points a machine that secretes
and a machine that consumes" (TRG 1992:172).
'~ichol imitates the Jarryesque mathematics of
Queneau in order to parody the science of Greimasian
linguistics. Like an ontogenetic semiotician who uses
"pataphysics to calculate the grammatic densities of
language in order to derive their geometric rnorphology
(oblate spheroid for Italian, prolate spheroid for English,
etc.) (TRG 1980:lll-112), Nicha1 attempts to calculate the
qualities of an uttered thought:
its heaviness (1980a:113);
its quickness (1990: 34) ; the full length of its periphery
(1990:16); and the square root of its rationale (1985:89).