Before tracing the connection between panic philosophy and pataphysics, I would like to outline the key concepts and assumptions shaping le panique. The keystone texts of the Mouvement Panique only confirm Topor’s statement that the group members wanted to define their goals in a manner flexible enough to never let themselves be cornered by their own proclamations. Indeed, explicit definitions of what constitutes philosophie panique are not frequent in these texts. At the group’s founding, Arrabal attempted such a definition in “L’Homme panique,” stating that le
panique is “[…] une ‘manière d’être’ régie par la confusion, l’humour, la terreur, le hasard et
l’euphorie. Du point de vue éthique le panique a pour base la pratique de la morale au pluriel, et du point de vue philosophique, l’axiome ‘la vie est la mémoire et l’homme, le hasard’.”254 Taking all precaution against being limited by definitions, Arrabal calls this statement an “anti- définition.” According to this anti-definition, le panique is not only a philosophy of artistic creation but also a way of living. In other words, if someone wants to create in the spirit of le
panique, they must live it all the time in order to acquire a certain way of perceiving and
experiencing the surrounding world. This way is informed by one’s openness to confusion, humor, terror, chance and euphoria stemming from bodily reactions, all of which are constitutive elements of philosophie panique. By bringing all those elements in the mix of perception of the world, le panique, just like pataphysics, advocates reluctance towards preconceived truths. Le
panique specifically insists on renouncing commonly accepted ethical and moral codes, as they
are unnecessary inhibitors in terms of the ways in which we can live and commune with the world. The final statement of the definition, “la vie est la mémoire et l’homme est le hasard,” is a
254 Arrabal, “L’Homme panique,” 52.
result of Arrabal’s semi-philosophical divagation on the direction of le panique at its founding in 1962 and is tightly related to the philosophy’s mythological origins. As it warrants further explanation, I will return to it following my discussion of the definition of the movement’s mission.
Now that half a century has passed since the founding of the movement, those involved in the group’s life from the beginning are more willing to talk about it in more mundane and down- to-earth terms. Arrabal, for example, no longer firmly insists on the prefix “anti-” to be added to the name of the group or to its definition. 2007 saw the publication of Diccionario Pánico, a dictionary of terms and expressions related to philosophie panique as given by Arrabal.255 We can see that in the entry on “Pánico” the artist defines the group in somewhat more conventional terms than in 1960s and admits that his definitions change over time:256
Indefinible movimiento artístico literario y científico que defino con diferencias notables por lo menos une vez por año. Muda y transmuta día y noche, ayer y mañana, física y espiritualmente. […] El anti-cientista grupo surrealista fue para Topor, Jodorowsky y para mí un anacronismo anacoreta, encapotadísimo por crónicas políticas. En el “Memento pánico” de Topor y en mi primer manifesto (El hombre pánico) dejamos constancia de nuestro interés por la Ciencia y nuestro desinterés por el surrealismo. [An undefined artistic, literary and scientific movement, which I redefine with notable differences at least once a year. The
255 Fernando Arrabal and Raúl Herrero, Diccionario pánico (Zaragoza: Libros del Innombrable, 2007). The 2007 volume is an extended edition of a collection of Arrabal’s definitions and aphorisms first assembled by Pollux Hernúñez in 1998.
256 At this point in time we can already observe between the lines Arrabal’s fascination with pataphysics and that the artist aligns both currents of thought. I will analyze further the intersection of le panique and pataphysics in the following section.
movement changes and transforms day and night, from day to day, physically and spiritually. […] For me and Topor, the anti-scientific Surrealist movement constituted an anachronism reserved for political chronicles. In Topor’s “Petit memento panique” and in my first manifesto (L’Homme panique) we declare our interest in Science and our disinterest in the Surrealism.]257
In this recent definition of philosophie panique, Arrabal allows himself to call the group a “movement,” however constraining such label may be, and names two theoretical texts composed at the founding of the group as its “manifestos.” He also admits that the group is a living structure and it evolves along with its founders’ interests, for example with his interest in pataphysics, which echoes throughout this entry. Furthermore, Arrabal identifies the key contributors to le panique (even though by this point the three founders welcomed more contributors, such as Olivier O. Olivier, Sam Szafran and Christian Zeimert), and positions the group against the Surrealists, even though at the time of founding the Mouvement Panique he was attracted to Breton and his group.
As much as the definition of the Groupe Panique may fluctuate, the philosophy managed to survive despite Topor’s death in 1997, and it has reverberated to this day in Arrabal’s and Jodorowsky’s creative work. This philosophy is anchored in several key elements named earlier in this chapter, such as memory, confusion and chance, the significance of which is laid out in the aforementioned theoretical texts. Going back to his lecture at the University of Sydney, we can see that Arrabal had always intended to embed philosophie panique in a broader literary and philosophical tradition. Perhaps in order to give the genealogy of le panique a hint of mystery
257 Fernando Arrabal, “Pánico,” Diccionario pánico (Zaragoza: Libros del Innombrable, 2007), 301-302.
and dignified mysticism, he chose to root it in Greek mythology. Arrabal not only proposes to personify le panique through the Greek god Pan, but also notes the mythological genealogy of artistic expression that results from the application of philosophie panique by pointing out its personification in the nine muses. Arrabal explains that the muses were children of Memory (Mnémosyne) and Zeus, himself a son of Memory’s brother Time (Chronos). Arrabal grants a great significance to the fact that the muses representing respective arts were fruit of such an unusual, incestuous union of Memory and Time, and adopts them as two pillars of his group’s philosophy and artistic agenda.
Further, Arrabal proposes to debunk the claim that memory, understood as the things that we remember, belongs temporally in the past. Arrabal states that the future is determined also by memory, as the latter serves to make predictions but also assist us with our encounters of unpredictable. Arrabal refers to the memory of the future as chance: “Je vins à penser que l’avenir était déterminé par le hasard et je supposai même que la confusion (que je ne distinguais pas du hasard) régissait notre avenir et par conséquent notre présent et notre […] passé (ex- avenir).”258 With his proposition to view memory, chance and confusion as three distinctive manifestation of one phenomenon, one that determines the ways in which people relate to the world, Arrabal collapses the notion of time and renders linear temporality irrelevant. The categories of past (ex-future), present and future become obsolete as their artificiality is exposed.
With the adoption of memory, chance and confusion, as well as the non-chronological conception of time, Arrabal comes up with two semi-arbitrary statements that will also serve as mottos of philosophie panique, namely, “L’avenir agit en coups de théâtre,” and “La vie est la mémoire et l’homme est le hasard.” I contend that these mottos will determine the group’s initial
258 Arrabal, “L’Homme panique,” 41.
predilection for theater and reinforce the ways in which the paniques choose the human and the visceral, rather than the artificial and the logical, in their creative explorations. Arrabal admits to having come up with the first phrase by picking up a book and playing a linguistic game, which I view as purely oulipian: “Je choisis un mot ou un membre de phrase d’une page prise au hasard, dans un livre; puis j’ouvre ce même livre en un autre endroit et je recommence l’opération. Il ne s’agit pas d’un jeu automatique, puisque la seconde partie doit être choisie de telle sorte que l’ensemble forme une phrase cohérente du point de vue grammatical (exclusivement).”259 By relying on controlled chance, Arrabal assembled a phrase that surprised him by the profoundness of the meaning comprised in it, as he put together “l’avenir agit,” and “en coups de théâtre.” Rather than ascribing sense to it, he let himself be guided by the potential power of arbitrarily juxtaposed words. The adoption of this sentence as a motto of the group resulted in an emphasis on theater with an element of chance and confusion (associated by Arrabal with the future, “l’avenir”), which evolved more as spontaneous performance rather than staging a pre-planned play. The second motto, also revealed in the “L’Homme panique” lecture, was born out of a similarly spontaneous and arbitrary reasoning process, as oulipian as the aforementioned linguistic game. Arrabal admits that the process started with a plaisanterie mathématique that led him to sketch a sequence of equations resulting in the postulate that chance is equal to the square root of negative one, and therefore does not have a logical solution.260 Arrabal further combines this conclusion with a digression on the chemical nature of human memory, and this stream of personal reasoning leads him to proclaim that “La vie est la mémoire et l’homme est le hasard,” thus declaring his commitment to memory and chance over intelligence and reason.
259 Ibid, 41. There is no indication, however, that Arrabal engaged in an oulipian linguistic game consciously and deliberately.