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

the Symbolists, for example, just as the Oulipians attack
the Surrealists. Both cases of conflict pit the pragmatic
formalism of postrnodernity against the aesthetic mysticism
of rnodernity. What is at stake is the status of poetry in a
world of science. How rnight poetry reclaim its own viable
truth Hou might science benefit from its own poetic irony
Surrationalism, for example, responds to such questions
not only by using the forms of poetry to criticize the myths
of science (its pedantic theories of expressive truth), but
also by using the forms of science to criticize the myths of
poetry (its romantic theories of expressive genius).
Surrationalism has accented this conflict between science
and poetry in three different ways.
The Futurists inflect
the machinic intensities of technological forms; the
Oulipians inflect the mathetic intensities of numerological
forms; and the "Pataphysicians inflect the mnemonic
intensities of palaeological forms. This survey focuses
largely upon these three surrational movements not only
because -they have better expressed the original intentions
of 'pataphysics, but also because they have received less
critical attention from theoreticians.
Surrationalism is thus just as exceptional as it is
'pataphysical, defining a regime for the avant-garde, not