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

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such a binary relation and its plenary opposite.
The syzygy
of words reveals that language not only defines, but also
deletes, this distance between extremes. It assumes the
possibility of the incompossible: Plus-and-Minus ( 2 ).
Jarry suggests that, for "the dispute between the sign
Plus and the sign Minus," a philosopher can demonstrate "the
identity of opposites, by means of the mechanical device
called the phssick-stick" (1965:252).
More excremental than
instrumental, this syrnbol of power lampoons phallogocentric
representation. Not a priapic sceptre, but a toilet brush--
such a staff is an "uprooted phallus" (1965:lll) thst beats
the nomad koan, not the royal word, into its student.
The
device spins about its axis along a line that does not trace
out the cross of the law so much as cross out al1 trace of
the law:
"in each quarter of every one of your
rotations[ ...]y ou form a cross with yourself" (111).
The
device in motion both affirms and negates, becoming not only
an alchernical cipher for the holism of opposite parts, but
also a scientific symbol for a margin of probable error.
Lyotard also refers to this turning of a "bar which
separates the this from the not-this" (1993:15) when he
posits a linear device, whose stasis signifies a mandatory
division, but whose motion activates an aleatory confusion. 9