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

the excesses of such metastasis evoke the flidouille of Ubu:
"['p]ataphysics or metaphysics, this pregnancyr ...] is one of
the strangest signs[ ...] of this spectral environment where
each ce11 (each function, each structure), is left with the
possibility, as in cancer, [...]of multiplying indefinitely"
(1990:28). Science is a tautological extravagance, for
which Ubu, "a figure of genius, replete with that which has
absorbed everything, transgressed everything, [... Iradiates
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in the void like an imaginary solution" (71).
Science now
functions in what Jarry might cal1 an economy of phvnance
(1969:43), expending without investing, producing pschitt or
merdre--an ironic eponym for "excess" with an excess letter.
Baudrillard suggests that, for such an economy of
science, the threat of the unreal haunts every system of
verity since the methods of physics can no longer confirm
whether or not reality itself is a fsntasy:
"[sJuch would
be the [']pataphysics[ ...] that lies in wait for al1 physics
at its inadmissible limitstt (1990:85). Has not physics
already started to resemble a science of imaginary
solutions, what with its particle zoo of new paradoxes (the
amphibolies of psrticles, the metaleptics of causality) Do
we not see a hint of 'pataphysics in the strsngeness gf
anti-matter, black-holes, and time-travel (the theories of
which have already fomented philosophical apprehensions