Millenial 'Pataphysics: The Postmodern Apocalypse of Science

by Christian Bök and Darren Wershler-Henry

above: Darren Wershler-Henry. owLerglyph

Originally published in Open Letter 9.7 (winter 1997),

Copy/pasted from alienated.net, approvals pending, s'il vous plait...

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"[M]etaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature." (Borges 14)

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Borges features an imaginary universe, a fantastic surreality, where "every philosophy is by definition a dialectical game, a Philosophie des Als Ob (14) a game that Jarry might call by the name of 'pataphysics (192), the quixotic science not only of imaginary solutions and arbitrary exceptions, but of academic frivolity and hermetic perversity. Borges imagines an allegory of simulation, a tragedy of seduction, in which a secret cabal of rebel artists has conspired to replace the actual world, piece by piece, with a virtual world, so that the inertia of a true history vanishes, phase by phase, into the amnesia of a false memory. Jarry likewise suggests through 'pataphysics that reality in its verity does not exist as a Ding an Sich, but exists only as the interpretive projection of a phenomenal perspective -- which is to say that reality is never as it is, but is always as if it is. Reality is pseudo: it is more virtual than actual; it is real only to the degree to which it can seem to be real and only for so long as it can be made to stay real. Jarry claims that 'pataphysics studies "the universe supplementary to this one" (131), but not simply an adjunct reality so much as an ersatz reality, "a universe which can be [...] envisaged in the place of the traditional one" (131) -- an alternate universe that, as a' supplement, threatens to seduce the predicate universe away from its own presence. Tlÿ n thus spills over the edges of its imaginary world and floods the frame of our millenary world, realizing its alien images while etherealizing our human events.

'Pataphysics, for Jarry, dramatizes "the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics" (131), as both its excess and its redress, in order to become "the science [...] extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics" (131). 'Pataphysics arises in a time when a tyranny of truth has increased our esteem for the lie, when a tyranny of reason has increased our esteem for the mad, so that, as Nietzsche avers, "to be noble might then come to mean: to entertain follies" (92). Jarry performs humorously on behalf of literature what Nietzsche performs seriously on behalf of philosophy, each providing a feasible exemplum in the past for a possible scientia of the future -- one which demonstrates that anomalies extrinsic to a system remain secretly intrinsic to such a system, the most credible of truths always evolving from the most incredible of errors, the praxis of science always involving the parapraxis of poetry. 'Pataphysics, "the science of the particular" (131), does not study the rules governing the general recurrence of a periodic incident (the expected case) so much as study the games governing the special occurrence of a sporadic accident (the excepted case). 'Pataphysics thus shadows forth from metaphysics, appearing as an image that replaces its model according to a structure as parallel perhaps as these sentences. ' 'Pataphysics is imaginary: it does not exist as a discipline. What then is there to study? Such a science, like this nonsense about science, is perhaps no more than an ectype without a prototype -- a form generated ex nihilo, like an ur from Tlön.

'Pataphysics heralds apocalyptically what Baudrillard might call a "casual form of writing to match the casual vnementialit of our age" (1995:17) -- an Ubuesque commentary upon "the Grande Gidouille of History" (17). Baudrillard observes that, for the "[']Pataphysics of the year 2000" (1), history has accelerated past the escape velocity for reality, moving from the centrifugal gravity of the real into the centripetal celerity of the void: the interzone of simulation. Contributors to this issue of Open Letter participate in such a postmodern commentary, insofar as they all subvert the categorical distinction between science and poetry. Such writers not only criticize pedantic theories of expressive truth by resorting to the formalism of poetry in order to reveal the mysticism of science, but also criticize romantic theories of expressive genius by resorting to the formalism of science in order to repeal the mysticism of poetry. These writers suggest not only that the instrument of science can inform itself through the experiments of poetry, but also that the instrument of poetry can perform upon itself experiments for science. The science of 'pataphysics arises during the historical transition from an organism to cyborganism, when the metaphysics of science has totalized its control over truth, but has not yet optimized its' control of truth -- so that, while poetry can no longer depose science from without it, poetry can hope to oppose science from within it. The science of 'pataphysics thus expresses on behalf of poetry what the metaphysics of science represses in itself.

'Pataphysics (a neologism fraught with polysemy) makes its debut at the turn of the century when Ubu, the nihilistic scaramouche, describes himself as a "Professor of [']pataphysics" (26): "a branch of science which we have invented and for which a crying need is generally experienced" (27). Jarry precedes the orthography of the French word 'pataphysique with an apostrophe in order to avoid a "simple pun" (192), but ironically enough, such a diacritical mark only signals, as present by proxy, what is absent by edict, so that the word invokes apostrophically the homophonic phrases that it revokes catastrophically. Ubu, for example, is a slapstick comedian (pataud physique) of unhealthy obesity (pateux physique), whose bodily language (patois physique) foments an astounded physics (épatée physique) that is not your physics (pas ta physique). 'Pataphysics embodies a polysemic fusion of both poetry and science, insofar as the French idiom for the English word "flair," la patte (the hand of the artist, the "paw" of the style), appears in the homophonic phrase patte physique the flair of physics. The science of 'pataphysics often deploys such flair through any one of three tactics -- each one a different case of exception: variance (anomalos), deviance (clinamen), and alliance (syzygia). The anomalos generates a special case of dissimilitude within a' general case of similitude; the syzygia generates a special case of similitude within a general case of dissimilitude; and the clinamen generates a swerve that breaks away from the continuum that connects the anomalos to the syzygia.
Millenial Pataphysics: The Postmodern Apocalypse of Science

'Pataphysics functions in the hypothetical spirit of what Vaihinger might call a "philosophy of as if" (1966:xlii) because the "as if" constitutes a paradox of both contingency and expediency, in which reference is made to an impossibility, but from this impossibility an inference is made: "reality [...] is compared with something whose [...] unreality is at the same time admitted" (98). Neither a doctrine, nor a regimen, 'pataphysics does not pretend to unify its parts into a system or to ratify its ploys into an agenda: such a casual science has no theory, no method (even though Jarry has since inspired writers to devise an institute for 'pataphysicians, the Collÿ ge de 'Pataphysique, whose absurd bureaucracy mimics a fictional archive, the Grand Academy of Lagado, which in turn mimics a "retro-scientific" archive, the Royal Society of England); moreover, such a casual science has no manual, no primer (even though Jarry has since inspired critics to derive the principles of 'pataphysics from the few excerpts cited in a fictional almanac, Elements of 'Pataphysics, which is itself cited in a "neo-scientific" almanac, Exploits and Opinions). Such a science exists for Jarry in an " eigenstate" of indeterminate potential, both there and not there, its text written in an invisible ink, "sulphate of quinine" (192), whose words remain unseen until read in a "deep' darkness" (191) under the "infrared rays of a spectrum whose other colors [are] locked in an opaque box" (192). 'Pataphysics works even though its truth cannot be seen except under a light that cannot be seen in a place that cannot be seen.

fig.30: Communication. D.Wershler-Henry. Nicholodeon

Feyerabend argues that, for science to progress, a predicate truth must create an alternate space, where science can escape from the mandate of its paradigm in order to explore the paradox of its paralogy: "we need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world [...] which may actually be just another dream-world" (32). 'Pataphysics in effect provides such a Traumwelt by dramatizing a principle of Feyerabend, who argues for a dadaism of science, in which all truth is secretly aberrant, and no error is patently abhorrent: "[t]he only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes" (23). Such a principle does not encode a laissez-faire economy of relative capitalism (whose Darwinian competition requires that a royal science discard the truth of a defunct concept as either extinct or deviant); instead, such a principle tries to entice a savoir-faire economy of relative criticism (whose Lucretian arbitration requires that a nomad science bracket the truth of a defunct concept as either dormant or defiant). Not philosophy, but philosophastry, such a science is scandalous, superfluous, quilting together a harlequin patchwork of both parodies and paradoxes. Its delight in the eclectic, the esoteric, encourages a promiscuous economy of indiscriminate exchanges in order to make possible an absolute expenditure of thought without any' absolute investiture in thought. All that 'pataphysics proposes appears catastrophically on the horizon as a rupture: peripheral, ephemeral -- a hoax, really and truly, but a hoax that reveals the hoax of both the real and the true. McCaffery observes that the lies of 'pataphysics do not affirm the frivolousness of the true so much as the marvelousness of the untrue: "[b]eyond mendacity [...] is the vitality of articulation which carries its own positive implications: that all events are capable of alteration, that a lie attacks language at its weakest fabricative point: reality itself" (200). Nietzsche observes that truth is more reactive than creative for, when science studies the real, science values the true, not because the true grants itself either a use or an aim, but because the true treats itself as both a law and an end: "'Why do you not want to deceive?' especially if it should seem -- and it does seem! -- as if life aimed at [...] deception, simulation, delusion" (281-282). Why believe in truth? Why not believe in untruth? Why does belief in either case take itself so seriously? Why does belief in effect believe in itself? Why not move from the illusion of truth to the truth of illusion? The science of 'pataphysics suggests that, without poetry, what science reveals about the horror vacui of the universe, the abysmal fact that deception subtends all conception, must seem utterly nightmarish. The science of 'pataphysics suggests that, because the value of poetry resides in its ability to find value in the untruth that the truth of science reveals about reality, ' the metaphysics of science must propose a cancellation of truth rather than any consolation through truth in order to transform the universe from a nihilistic experience of the void to an aesthetic experience of the void.

Baudrillard suggests that, for the postmodern condition, "[a]ll metaphysical tension has been dissipated, yielding a 'pataphysical ambiance" (1990:71) -- the grotesquery of tautology, for which Ubu, "a figure of genius, replete with that which has absorbed everything [...] , radiates in the void like an imaginary solution" (71). 'Pataphysics is a genre of science fiction that perceives science as a fiction, one discussing not the possible actualities for a future, but the impossible virtualities of a future -- not what might be, but what might have become. 'Pataphysics functions in the tense of the future perfect, of the post modo the very tense of the simulacrum in its precession. Whereas metaphysics is the anti of simulation, 'pataphysics is the ante of simulation, confronting the (t)ruthlessness of truth with even more (t)ruthlessness: "only a [']pataphysics of simulacra can remove us from the [...] strategy of simulation and the impasse of death in which it imprisons us" (1994:154), and "[t]his supreme ruse of the system [...] , only a superior ruse can stop" (153-154). The science of 'pataphysics does not find a place for truth, only to find itself in the place of truth, but displaces itself again and again so that truth never finds a place for itself. Such a use of logic against the use of logic forces the use of logic through the void at its centre -- the' "[d]ead point: the dead center where every system crosses this subtle limit of [...] contradiction [...] and enters live into non-contradiction" (1990:14) -- the ecstasy of thought: "[h]ere begins a [']pataphysics of systems" (14).

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Millenial Pataphysics: The Postmodern Apocalypse of Science

by Christian Bök and Darren Wershler-Henry

Originally published in Open Letter 9.7 (winter 1997),

Copy/paste reposted from Wershler(-Henry)'s alienated.net

Darren Wershler-Henry. The Golden Age of Concrete for Christian Bok [above], from Nicholodeon Online. 1998.

Pataphysics: A Religion in the Making - Asger Jorn on Ubuweb

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