Review of Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor (eds), ’Pataphysics Unrolled By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/167651777/Review_of_Katie_L_Price_and_Michael_R_Taylor_eds_Pataphysics_Unrolled?email_work_card=title The intellectual status of the ’pataphysics of Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) is contested and also neglected. Jarry was a French eccentric writer, artist, and theatrical puppeteer. Editor Katie Price says of him that he “cultivated a life of profound ridiculousness, a project he approached with utmost seriousness” (1). ’Pataphysics can be ridiculous—it is, after all, the science of imaginary solutions—but it can be serious, inadvertently as well as intentionally. Price notes the 1948 foundation of Le Collège de ’Pataphysique, which boasted artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), author, poet, and editor Raymond Queneau (1903-1976), and playwright Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994) as members; and she observes that it has a “reputation as a secret society producing secret knowledge” (6). This explains in part why a book like ’Pataphysics Unrolled—as a mode of thinking that facilitates a particular modern esotericism—is reviewed in Nova Religio. ...