'Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies)

You'll learn new words.Sixteen more words are required before I can submit this review.Still missing one more.Techne.

One would tend to think that, by now, every subject of intellectual or cultural appeal would have already been fully deconstructed (or otherwise posmodernized) given the academic supranimerary of English Studies faculty with nothing better to do. If I had to pick a subject obscure enough to have escaped the onslaught up till the end of last century I might have ventured: 'Pataphysics, an intellectual peral whose creation we owe to the unique and tragic genius of Alfred Jarry. But even this unlikely target seems to have now fallen under the pomo scalpel if one is to blame Christian Bok's recent "'Pataphysics: the poetics of an imaginary science".Finding himself a letter short of a book, Bok opted to write an "obfuscule", i.e., a statement to his own misaprehension and misappropriation of his subject. These start appropriately with the title. Presumably because it concerns itself with the search for imaginary solutions, 'pataphysics becomes "an imaginary science"! By the same token the Chemistry of aqueous solutions would surely become an "underwater science" or the Psychology of Serial Killers a ... "a murderous science"! In fact, 'Pataphysics is not A science, real, symbolic or imaginary much less the pseudo-science that Bok keeps harping but, as Jarry forcefully underscored, 'Pataphysics IS Science!The remainder of the book belabours the presumption that 'Pataphysics represents a stage in some secular clash between Poetry and Science (read Good vs Evil) without offering any kind of evidence for the existence of such confrontation, not to speak of why 'Pataphysics would be called into the fray! Bok regards this downturn as a remedy to the avowed disengagement of 'Pataphysics which does not apparently square with his own militant anti-science agenda. Thus he vows to outjarry Jarry by making him a born-again Nietzschiean and liberating the little Derrida inside him (as if Ubu was not enoUgh)! Though he calls his work "a survey" he is quick to veer of his purpose under the ridiculous pretext of "avoiding the normalization(?) of patahphysics" ... "by alluding intermittently to 'pataphysical enterprises' that do not refer to the tradition of Jarry but nevertheless represent some of the exceptions to the genealogy that this survey posits." And, immediately following, he takes exception to his own anti-normalizing scruple by offering a classification of the exceptions found in the lore of pataphysics --- not questioning, of course, whether once classified under his rule these remain exceptions! But even his translation of the pataphysical bon-mots betrays Bok's distorting agenda: sizygy becomes 'alliance' as opposed to the confluence it has expressed since the greeks, clinamen is 'deviance' rather than the simply 'deviation' to better echo the 'transgressive' postures that the post-modernist must fashion him self to assume. Soon enough the Deleuzian deleuzions, the Althusserian trussles, and the Baudrillardian inbroglios raise their wrongheadeness overshadowing any other pretense to "survey" Jarry or his 'pataphysical descendance. Bok gives hardly more than a page to the College de 'Pataphysique (most of it invoking Samuel Butler!), which he calls and 'absurd school' and equally short shrifts Queneau, Torma, Daumal, Arnaud, Duchamp and Shattuck (all very interesting individuals on their own.). who animated it before its self-occultation in 1972 He never mentions Vian, Satie, Salvador, Miro, Dubuffet, Ionesco, Marx (Groucho, of course), Clair or Prevert: all Satrapes of Highest Munificense in the 'Pataphysical Pantheon. He ignores the contributions of such classical american 'pataphysicians as Gelett Burgess, Walter Arenberg, Tex Avery or Frank Zappa or current ones like Bill Griffith, Peter Shickele, Mark Leyner or Karen Mantler. Instead he picks three 'case studies' of 'pataphysical influence which he insists in parochializing as Italian Futurism, French Oulipism and Canadian Jarryism. Needless to say these excursions are hampered by Bok's peculiar myopia and thus remain perfunctory and unfair to the movements and individuals he sets to describe in all respects, including their different 'pataphysical inspirations. Aware of Bok's credentials as an expert in recent Canadian literature I was hopeful of gaining some enlightenment about the late "Four Horsemen" and their intensive experiments in sound poetry, in comics and VoIdeo or the unique work of the intriguing Christopher Dewdney, to which Bok dedicated a number of articles. What Bok delivers is some unsufferably pedantic description of anecdotical exploits wrapped in some diatribe against the poetic promoters of canadian nationalism, a subject which only becomes 'pataphysical malgre' soi, much as Bok's own language does at its worst. Here is a typical gem [p.15]: "Science graphs a rhizomatic flowchart, an agonistic force field of diversified catastrophies, some which collide with each other, some which collude with each other, all of which operate together simultaneously in fits and starts as asynchronous rates of incommensurate change". The only thing conveyed by such bouts of verborrhea is that Bok takes 'pataphysics to be something like and extension of his poetic license to sokalize his mixed metaphores well beyond the merely silly into the much netherer reaches of the truly idiotic (or "ideotimistic" as he no doubt would call it)! All he manages, finally, is to become the joke he does not get. Ah Ha!For all the talk of parody and irony, the single remarkable thing about Bok's prose is how entirely destitute it remains of humour, wit and charm --- the recognizable signposts of the 'pataphysical, as of the scientific and the poetic at their very best! If is is any indication of what his poetry may be like, I am sure to never find out and that may be the one devisable merit of this essay. For anyone truly interested in 'Pataphysics I urge the Fayard 2000 edition of "Les Tres Riches Heures du College de Pataphysique" which you can get from Amazon France or, in the english speaking world, the <a href="[...]">Atlas Press publications</a> of the Institutum Pataphysicum Londoniense.

I loved this book. It made me think, imagine and consider imaginary solutions to imaginary problems in new, wonderful and poetic ways!

Bok's thesis is a challenging, but rewarding read. The correlation between the historic metaphoric shifts in poetry and science is thoroughly articulated here, building to a definition of the pataphysical. Highly recommend.