EPILOGUE:

(exerpted from: Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science)

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

'Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science
by Christian Bök
Northwestern University Press, 2002
ISBN: 0 81011 877 7

Scientific innovation in the era of postmodernity has become the august quorum of ideological controversy, particularly since the fiscal edicts of capitalism have threatened to reduce scientists to little more than court sorcerors in the royal entourage of military industry. Science has incubated a potential onslaught of planetary disasters (be they thermonuclear, environmental, etc.), ostensibly justifying these risks for the sake of an insistent curiosity, wagering the future of all humanity against the verity of a paradigm. Science at its logical extreme appears to conduct a capricious experiment that facilitates the extinction of the species, doing so, as if to facilitate the extinction of science itself. The fear of such a suicidal tendency in science has in turn spawned an array of vitally urgent, but largely futile, countermeasures (such as neoludditism, ecoterrorism, etc.).

'Pataphysics confronts the dangers of science, not with an antonymic wager (that counteracts the threat), but with a hyperbolic wager (that exacerbates the threat), accenting the grotesque absurdity of such epistemic extremism. 'Pataphysics even goes so far as to entertain a prohibited hypothesis, asking itself: What if the most radical gesture in science may in fact be this epistemic extremism -- this impulse to revolutionize the condition of the species, even if such a transformation entails the abolition of the species itself? 'Pataphysics suggests that any attempt to subvert the imperial paradigm of metaphysics may nevertheless require a metamorphosis of thought no less disruptive than the havoc already wreaked by science on behalf of the dubious project called "progress." What are the sociopolitical implications of such an enterprise? Is 'pataphysics apocalyptic?

'Pataphysics has inspired an anarchic politics of social revolt among much of the avant-garde, but the pedigree of this revolt has undergone many twists and many shifts in the clinamen of its evolution. How are we supposed to interpret the political integrity of an æsthetic, whose dispute with science finds itself adapted to the demands of any political franchise, be it Fascist (as in the case of Italian Futurism) or Leftist (as in the case of Russian Futurism)? How are we supposed to interpret the political solipsism of an æsthetic, whose collèges or ouvroirs must supposedly forfeit any commitment to a social agenda in order to become wryly nonpartisan (according to Shattuck) or wryly egalitarian (according to Sandomir)? The caprices of such a nomadic science almost appear to preclude its invested interest in politics altogether.

Vaneigem complains that, historically, the nihilistic philosophy of 'pataphysics has lent itself too easily to an aesthetics of social apathy even though such nihilism has the inherent potential to foment a rebellious apocalypse ([1967]1994:178).[1] The nihilism that Vaneigem has described as "active" (179), because it foreshadows revolution, might aptly characterize the early 'pataphysics of the Futurist coterie in Russia, but the nihilism that Vaneigem has described as "passive" (178), because it discourages revolution, might aptly characterize the later 'pataphysics of the Jarryite collège in France. The avant-garde philosophy that initially provokes a call for permanent rebellion against the social values of the bourgeoisie eventually devolves into a game of nihilistic conformity to such values. The paralogy of one era now furnishes the imperial paradigm for the next.

'Pataphysics may demand the dynamic nihilism of social revolt, but this demand has found itself either exploited on behalf of an autocratic radicalism or enfeebled on behalf of a scholastic conformism. While we might conceivably dismiss 'pataphysics because of its support for the technocracy of both the Fascists and the Leftists, we might at the same time take ironic solace in the fact that, in both cases, the spirit of such revolt finds itself suppressed by the very political apparatus that such revolt makes possible -- almost as if 'pataphysics threatens to unleash an æsthetic potential that even the revolutionaries must find threatening. Might we not speculate then that 'pataphysics represents a form of epistemic extremism, whose perils may pose so great a threat to any system of values that such a force must be aggressively tamed before it is inadvertently freed?[2]

Althusser may have unwittingly articulated a 'pataphysical speculation about the nature of such political discourse when he remarks that "[i]deology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" ([1970]1971:162). Ideology constitutes an imaginary solution to epistemic problems, insofar as ideology strives to provide an unreal conciliation to an actual contradiction in a paradigm. Ideology is thus practically 'pataphysical (differing from the bizarre science of Jarry, only insofar as ideology must disavow its own imaginariness, forbidding any deliberate suspension of disbelief).While the ruses of 'pataphysics may well enable ideology, such nihilistic stratagems must nevertheless be suppressed and controlled by a royal power, because the ruses of 'pataphysics can also expose ideology, revealing it for the illusion that it is.

Baudrillard suggests that, under these nihilistic conditions, what is 'pataphysical finds its mandate enacted in the arena, not of sociopolitics, but of transpolitics -- the arena of postmodern simulation (in which the hysteric delirium of every social system has reached an outer limit of inertia -- the indifferent equilibrium of a global market and its atomic terror): "[t]he transpolitical [...] is the malicious curvature that puts an end to the horizon of meaning" ([1983]1990a:25) insofar as such a clinamen deflects the rational progress of political teleology and propels us into an ecstatic fixation on political "hypertely" (25) -- an end beyond the end: what ends all ends.[3] Ideology in such a mode of 'pataphysical exaggeration witnesses the uncontrolled promulgation of control -- the excess growth of atelic forces beyond the restraint of an endmost purpose.

Baudrillard suggests that, while sociopolitics must manage a state of metaphysical anomie, transpolitics must manage a state of 'pataphysical oddity: "[t]he era of the transpolitical is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence" ([1983]1990a:26) -- an aberration, whose clinamen deviates at random into an exceptional, but meaningless, catastrophe (not unlike the senseless agitation of a political terrorist -- whose acts do not change our social system so much as accent our own status as hostages within it).[4] Revolutions in such an era derive their impetus no longer from the transcendence of some dialectic (Aufhebung), but from the amplification of some hyperbole (Steigerung): "[t]he only revolution in things is [...] in their elevation to the nth power" (41) – the hypertelic escalation of a concept to its potential, but otherwise forbidden, extreme.

Ideology can no longer provide a convincing effacement of sociopolitical contradictions because, according to Baudrillard, such "contradictions have taken [on] the [']pataphysical form of [...] deficiency" ([1983]1990a:29). They have become a kind of disabling handicap, whose subaltern existence, as a political exception, can no longer be stigmatized or suppressed, but must in fact be recognized and legitimized, just as the social plight of the lunatic or the amputee must be acknowledged (through euphemisms) and accommodated (through prostheses). Such contradictions are tolerated so long as they are exposed and managed; however, the constant scrutiny of such critical analysis deprives the social system of any ideological credibility, and thus "the social looks in what it sees as its own [...] waste for a sort of transpolitical legitimacy" (29-30).

Heidegger remarks that, while science may court a technological dangerousness, such a risk may nevertheless enable the transcendence of this dangerousness -- for "[w]here the danger is [...], there the saving power is already thriving" ([1962]1977:42).[5] How can any solution to the problems of technology be anything but technological? How can any solution to the problems of philosophy be anything but philosophical? If 'pataphysics is politically ineffective, perhaps it only seems so, because it proposes a radical, but illicit, hypothesis, arguing that a revolution must paradoxically partake of the very discursive strategies that it opposes in order to be a revolution. The 'pataphysician does not counteract science so much as exaggerate science, adopting it parodically and applying it excessively, in order to destroy it by ultimately exhausting its imaginary potential.

exerpted from Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science
by Christian Bök
Northwestern University Press, 2002
ISBN: 0 81011 877 7