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

its subject as an absence--a vanishing point, projected
within ideology as though beyond ideology:
"the scholar
excludes himself in a concern for objectivity; yet what is
excluded is never anything but the 'person'[...],
not the
subject; moreover, this subject is filled[..,]with the very
exclusion it[ ...] imposes upon its person" (8).
Barthes suggests that science differs from poetry, not
because of any disparity between them in format, content,
method, or intent, but becaüse of a disparity between them
in statusœ-a prestige of pedagogy (3). Whereas poetry has
always offered an egalitarian regime, destabilizing the
signifier within a generalized economy of polysemic
enunciation, science has only offered a totalitarian regime,
stabilizing the si~nified within a restricted economy of
monosemic enunciation.
For Barthes, science must begin to
acknowledge its ideological investments, radicalizing itself
by poeticizing itself.
If ideology is the unreal
conciliation of a real contradiction, is it not fair to Say
that ideology is itself an imaginary solution--and therefore
'pataphysical
If metaphysics must study the ontology of
truth, must not 'pataphysics study the ideology of power
Ultimately, the conflict between science and poetry
concerns this power to speak the truth, and this power has