Abstract
This article is intended to shed light on philosophical considerations on the ontology of space (situation) as put forward in the prose and dramatic writings of French iconoclast Alfred Jarry, by posing that Jarry's notion of space is dynamic in a twofold sense. Firstly, Jarry's sense of space is consistently described in terms of a sense of temporality (duration), which is why Jarry's sense of space is distinctly higher-dimensional (space- time). Secondly, I argue that Jarry's reaction against conventional modalities of scientific and artistic thinking take the form of a subversive turn (which Deleuze calls the Great Turning), via the pseudoscience of pataphysics, which is directed not only against metaphysics, but also a geometric understanding of the physical and metaphysical worlds. I argue that Jarry's conception of a spatio-temporal ontology is distinctly non-geometric, or topological in nature. Topological imagery allows Jarry to present a more vital and fleshed out sense of living space-time, within which a new politics of space and time is activated by the forces of endless change and continuous deformation. I argue that through the topological corporeality of Ubu, Jarry promotes a sense of ABSTRACT theatre within which the dynamic properties of topological space become actualised in the way of a politics of the unimaginable, an Ubuesque realm where, through the power of technology and the imagination, the exceptional and unrealisable rule.