'Pataphysics Unrolled
Published on 22. October 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
344 pages
978-0-271-08959-1 (ISBN)
Description
In the 1890s, French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry founded pataphysics, the absurdist "science of imaginary solutions," a concept that has been nominally recognized as the precursor to Dadaism, Surrealism, and the Theater of the Absurd, among other movements. Over a century after Jarry "made the gesture of dying," Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor argue that it is time to take the comedic intervention of pataphysics seriously.
'Pataphysics Unrolled collects critical and creative essays to create an unauthorized account of pataphysical experimentation from its origins in the late nineteenth century through the contemporary moment. Reaching beyond the geographic and cultural boundaries normally associated with pataphysics, this volume presents rich readings of pataphysical syzygy, traces the influence of pataphysics across disciplines and outside of coteries such as the College de 'Pataphysique, and asks fundamental questions about the field of modern and contemporary studies that challenge distinctions between the modern and the postmodern, high and low culture, the serious and the comic. Touching on disciplines such as literature, art, architecture, education, music, and technology, this book reveals how pataphysics has been a platform and medium for persistent intellectual, poetic, conceptual, and artistic experimentation for over a century.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Charles Bernstein, Marc Decimo, Adam Dickinson, Johanna Drucker, Craig Dworkin, Catherine Hansen, James Hendler, John Heon, Ted Hiebert, Andrew Hugill, Steve McCaffery, Seth McDowell, Jerome McGann, Anne M. Mulhall, Marcus O'Dair, Jean-Michel Rabate, Orchid Tierney, and Brandon Walsh.
'Pataphysics Unrolled collects critical and creative essays to create an unauthorized account of pataphysical experimentation from its origins in the late nineteenth century through the contemporary moment. Reaching beyond the geographic and cultural boundaries normally associated with pataphysics, this volume presents rich readings of pataphysical syzygy, traces the influence of pataphysics across disciplines and outside of coteries such as the College de 'Pataphysique, and asks fundamental questions about the field of modern and contemporary studies that challenge distinctions between the modern and the postmodern, high and low culture, the serious and the comic. Touching on disciplines such as literature, art, architecture, education, music, and technology, this book reveals how pataphysics has been a platform and medium for persistent intellectual, poetic, conceptual, and artistic experimentation for over a century.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Charles Bernstein, Marc Decimo, Adam Dickinson, Johanna Drucker, Craig Dworkin, Catherine Hansen, James Hendler, John Heon, Ted Hiebert, Andrew Hugill, Steve McCaffery, Seth McDowell, Jerome McGann, Anne M. Mulhall, Marcus O'Dair, Jean-Michel Rabate, Orchid Tierney, and Brandon Walsh.
Reviews / Votes
"'Pataphysics Unrolled looks to be a pataphysically invaluable tome that is an illustration of . . . precisely such pataphysical endeavours as itself, pataphysically."-Brian Reffin Smith Leonardo Reviews "Continuing and elaborating Alfred Jarry's notion of 'pataphysics, this collection tracks 'pataphysics' continued appearances and developments in ensuing avant-garde movements, modern and contemporary art, the intersections of art, literature, and science- and the far-reaching effects of pushing against normative logics and thinking in exceptional ways."
-Judith Roof, author of What Gender Is, What Gender Does
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
University Park
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
20 Halftones, color; 19 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 178 mm
Width: 242 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
690 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-271-08959-1 (9780271089591)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Katie L. Price is Senior Associate Director at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College, codirector of the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium, and Interviews Editor at Jacket2. She is the author of the chapbook BRCA: Birth of a Patient.
Michael R. Taylor is Artistic Director and Chief Curator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He is the author of Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnes, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, and Thomas Chimes: Adventures in 'Pataphysics.
Michael R. Taylor is Artistic Director and Chief Curator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He is the author of Marcel Duchamp: Etant donnes, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, and Thomas Chimes: Adventures in 'Pataphysics.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Editors' Note
Introduction: "Unrolled by the Saliva and Teeth of the Water"
Katie L. Price
Part 1: "And Behold, the Wallpaper of Faustroll's Body": Jarry's Pataphysical Invitation
1. Twisted Witz: Experiments in Psychopathology and Humor by Dr. Faustroll and His Pataphysical Progeny
John Heon
2. Pataphallics in Jarry's Novels
Jean-Michel Rabate
3. Wartime Pataphysics: Postwar Surrealism, the Main a Plume Group, and Boris Rybak's Intraphysics
Catherine Hanson
4. Marcel Duchamp and the College de 'Pataphysique
Marc Decimo
Translated by Anne M. Mulhall
5. The Potential Energy of Texts [?U = ?P?V]
Craig Dworkin
Part 2: "Like a Musical Score, All Art and All Science": Pataphysics After Jarry and Beyond the College
6. Pataphysics in Philadelphia: The Strange Case of James E. Brewton
Michael R. Taylor
7. Circumstantial Evidence: Pataphysical Inflexions in Edward Dorn's Gunslinger and bpNichol's Probable Systems
Steve McCaffery
8. Beyond "Maxwell's Silver Hammer": Pataphysics and Popular Music
Marcus O'Dair
9. Art and the Pataphysics of Exception: Or, How a Sieve Becomes a Time Machine
Ted Hiebert
Part 3: "Written in the Curves of the Limbs": Pataphysical Criticism
10. Reading, Writing, and Rhythmatic
Jerome McGann
11. The Patacritical Demon, Two Decades Later
Johanna Drucker
12. Reflections on Applied Research in Patacriticism: Prism and Reading's Shape
Brandon Walsh
13. The Pataquerical Imagination: Midrashic Antinomianism and the Promise of Bent Studies
Charles Bernstein
Part 4: "Progression to an Infinite Degree Was Prophesized Therein": Pataphysics' Possible Futures
14. Concerning an Unfindable Architecture
Seth McDowell
15. Metabolic Poetics: Writing the Anthropocene
Adam Dickinson
16. Pataphysics and Computing
Andrew Hugill and James Hendler
17. Pataphysics and the Academy
Orchid Tierney
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
Editors' Note
Introduction: "Unrolled by the Saliva and Teeth of the Water"
Katie L. Price
Part 1: "And Behold, the Wallpaper of Faustroll's Body": Jarry's Pataphysical Invitation
1. Twisted Witz: Experiments in Psychopathology and Humor by Dr. Faustroll and His Pataphysical Progeny
John Heon
2. Pataphallics in Jarry's Novels
Jean-Michel Rabate
3. Wartime Pataphysics: Postwar Surrealism, the Main a Plume Group, and Boris Rybak's Intraphysics
Catherine Hanson
4. Marcel Duchamp and the College de 'Pataphysique
Marc Decimo
Translated by Anne M. Mulhall
5. The Potential Energy of Texts [?U = ?P?V]
Craig Dworkin
Part 2: "Like a Musical Score, All Art and All Science": Pataphysics After Jarry and Beyond the College
6. Pataphysics in Philadelphia: The Strange Case of James E. Brewton
Michael R. Taylor
7. Circumstantial Evidence: Pataphysical Inflexions in Edward Dorn's Gunslinger and bpNichol's Probable Systems
Steve McCaffery
8. Beyond "Maxwell's Silver Hammer": Pataphysics and Popular Music
Marcus O'Dair
9. Art and the Pataphysics of Exception: Or, How a Sieve Becomes a Time Machine
Ted Hiebert
Part 3: "Written in the Curves of the Limbs": Pataphysical Criticism
10. Reading, Writing, and Rhythmatic
Jerome McGann
11. The Patacritical Demon, Two Decades Later
Johanna Drucker
12. Reflections on Applied Research in Patacriticism: Prism and Reading's Shape
Brandon Walsh
13. The Pataquerical Imagination: Midrashic Antinomianism and the Promise of Bent Studies
Charles Bernstein
Part 4: "Progression to an Infinite Degree Was Prophesized Therein": Pataphysics' Possible Futures
14. Concerning an Unfindable Architecture
Seth McDowell
15. Metabolic Poetics: Writing the Anthropocene
Adam Dickinson
16. Pataphysics and Computing
Andrew Hugill and James Hendler
17. Pataphysics and the Academy
Orchid Tierney
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index