In my final pieces, I am planning on making an attempt at communicating and portraying pataphysics and it's creator, Jarry, summing up his absurdity and wildly strange beliefs on the matter. However, I am still trying to consolidate my own understanding on the topic in order to translate it successfully into my work.
At the moment, I understand it as a branch of science and philosophy, which is one step further removed from physics than metaphysics is. It deals with the 'laws governing exceptions' and with this contradicts general popular science, which finds it's grounding on repeated experiments and rules, instead by trusting in unique occurrences, or exceptions. One of it's defining qualities is how undefinable it is, where correct definitions are equivalent to wrong ones, and the way it relates to everything whilst acting as an escape from reality, distorting what we believe as solid truth into something a lot more fluid and rather ethereal. It appears to me to be riddled with paradoxes, being at once both useful and useless, imaginary and logical. In this way perhaps, it remains very subjective and esoteric. I feel like in the same way it is that bit farther fetched than metaphysics, it also exists in a realm that is one step on from our reality and consciousness. It is to me as if it remains in a parallel existence, veiled so as to be just about noticed, yet not fully legible. In the end it has to be remembered it was made up by Jarry himself, inspired by a high school science teacher who equally made up scientific theories, so to take it seriously is to entirely miss the point. It appears to be humorous and aware of its own absurdist, comical nature, and the people who follow it seem to also be in on the joke, even if they believe in it and explore it whole heartedly.
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