Pataphysics

Topophonique, Ochlophonique, Nostophonique et Pataphonique: trois études de cas

by John Levack Drever

Technologie imaginaire;
approche pataphysique de la musique, study day at the Sorbonne, Paris
2005

Blasphemies: a speech act perspective (2011)

by Neri Marsili

Lecture for the XII ‘Pathaphisical Symposium held Prague, September 2011

This study presents an innovative challenge for speech act theory: understanding blasphemy. The results shows that a... more This study presents an innovative challenge for speech act theory: understanding blasphemy. The results shows that a pragmatic approach can offer significant improvement to theological and moral comprehension of blasphemy.

Paragénesis de zeolitas alcalinas en un afloramiento de basaltos olivínicos amigdaloides de Junín de Los Andes, Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina

by Ernesto Gallegos

María E. Vattuone1,2,*, Pablo R. Leal1,3, Sabrina Crosta4, Yanina Berbeglia1, Ernesto
Gallegos1 y Carmen Martínez-Dopico1
1 Cátedra de Mineralogía, Departamento de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad de
Buenos Aires. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, C1428EHA, Argentina.
2 INGEIS- Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET).
Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3 Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Ciudad de
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
4 Servicio Geológico Minero Argentino (SEGEMAR). Av. Julio Argentino Roca 651.
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, C1067ABB, Argentina
* elena@gl.fcen.uba.ar y/o elenavattuone@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
The optical characteristics, XRD, unit cell, chemistry and crystallization
conditions of an... more ABSTRACT
The optical characteristics, XRD, unit cell, chemistry and crystallization
conditions of an alkaline zeolite assemblage were studied. The zeolites have been found
infilling amygdales and in the matrix of Tertiary olivine basalts from Junin de los
Andes, Patagonia. The secondary minerals (albite, pumpellyite, interestratified
chlorite/smectite (C/S), smectite, iddingsite, magnetite and hematite) are replacing
phenocrysts of plagioclase, olivine and the matrix of the rocks. Zeolites are sodic, calcosodic
and potassic in composition. Na–chabazite, analcime, Ca-K phillipsite and
paulingite are the first zeolites that crystallized. They were followed by acicular-fibrous
zeolites as natrolite/Na-gonnardite, thomsonite, mesolite and scolecite. The formation of
the first zeolites is consistent with low temperature (<100°C), low pressure (<1kb) and
alkaline (pH 9-10) hydrothermal/geothermal meteoric fluids, which were favored by
tensional fractures. The aSi decreased during the alteration process and the temperature
increased toward 200°C allowing the analcime formation followed by the equilibrium
assemblage natrolite/Na-gonnardite-thomsonite-scolecite and mesolite.
Key words: alkaline zeolites, basalts, Junín de Los Andes, Patagonia.

Butter-Spades, Footnotes, and Omnium: The Third Policeman as ’Pataphysical Fiction

by Anthony Adams

The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Special Centenary Issue: Flann O’Brien, guest editors Neil Murphy & Keith Hopper, XXXI (Fall 2011)

Butter-Spades, Footnotes, and Omnium: The Third Policeman as Pataphysical Fiction

Anthony Adams
more Butter-Spades, Footnotes, and Omnium: The Third Policeman as Pataphysical Fiction

Anthony Adams

From a chance and momentary perusal of the Policeman’s notebook it is possible for me to give here the relative figures for a week’s readings. For obvious reasons the figures themselves are fictitious. (The Third Policeman 103, n.7)

An anthology devoted to small boxes, such as chests and caskets, would constitute an important chapter in psychology. These complex pieces that a craftsman creates are very evident witnesses of the need for secrecy, of an intuitive sense of hiding places. (Bachelard, Poetics of Space 81)


A third of the way through Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, a reader might be encouraged to attempt the anthology Bachelard envisions; by its close, if not before, the same reader will be considerably dissuaded. Discouragement comes with the knowledge that such little boxes, which represent a psychological rather than a physical threshold, serve both to intrigue and mislead; The Third Policeman contains such elaborate boxes of misdirection that one might despair of ever finding the keys again. The novel tantalizes with its evocation of a brilliantly self-referential world filled with a most crazed sanity, and written in a relentlessly reflexive language. This style has encouraged readers to declare the novel an early exposition of the postmodern awareness that reality is not given, but written. Especially unnerving is a manifest distrust toward any language that threatens to describe reality, combined with a thrill in the madcap constructs of those who make the effort to do so. If the bulk of the action takes place in a hellish afterlife, or at least an intellectual purgatory, then The Third Policeman presents a curiously confusing hell in which inventiveness and verbosity pose greater dangers than any corporal punishment.