Clinamen

Definition

The clinamen is the deliberate, built-in error of a rule-governed system — the swerve from its own coherence that keeps the system alive. Perec takes the term from Epicurean theory, which proposes that "The world functions because from the outset there is of a lack of balance." In Life A User's Manual he operationalized it by omitting chapter 66 (corresponding to the 66th move of the knight's tour), and explained the omission in the terms that define the concept: "in order to break the symmetry, to introduce an error into the system, because when a system of constraints is established, there must also be anticonstraint within it. The system of constraints – and this is important – must be destroyed. It must not be rigid; there must be some play in it; it must, as they say, 'creak' a bit; it must not be completely coherent, there must be a clinamen." Carley's design-theoretical moral: "Perec's use of the clinamen in Life acknowledges that even the most exquisitely designed master plan cannot avoid factors outside of its control, such as death" — with Bellos's gloss on Bartlebooth: the plan "to complete a life without leaving a trace or a ripple on the surface of things must fail because it ignores death, or rather seeks to treat death only as an event that follows the completion of life, rather than as the radical imperfection that is in life and constitutes moral existence."

The concept thus has two faces. As method: the error is chosen — a designed incompleteness that breaks the system's symmetry before the world does. As fate: the error is suffered — Winckler's cunning, Bartlebooth's eyesight, the constraints "ultimately abandoned by Perec as the novel draws to a close" (the bi-square never fully realized; the knight's tour failing to visit one room, the cellar; Valene's painting left a preparatory sketch at his death). Design inherits both: the second-order constraint system must contain its own anticonstraint, and every master plan meets the factors it cannot control.

Key Thinkers

• Georges Perec — the concept's operationalizer: the missing chapter 66 as the designed swerve; the requirement that the system "must not be rigid… it must 'creak' a bit."
• Epicurus — the source theory: the atom's random swerve (the clinamen) by which the world escapes deterministic coherence — "The world functions because from the outset there is of a lack of balance" (not yet paged — see log).
• Rachel Carley — the concept's design transposer (2018): the clinamen as the constraint system's insurance against "factors outside of its control," and the chapter's warning that rigor must abandon itself.
• David Bellos — the concept's glossator: Bartlebooth's trace-erasing plan as the failure to treat death as "the radical imperfection that is in life"; the possible signals of the 66/99 omission ("a secret signal of the presence of unacknowledged quotations in the book, or, even more abstrusely, of the text's status as 'text'") (not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• Voluntary Constraints — the system the clinamen keeps open: anticonstraint as the system's own required member.
• Oulipo — the group whose rigor the clinamen qualifies: maximal constraint, deliberate imperfection.
• Rule-Breaking — the concept's kin: where Baldwin's decorator breaks rules from outside ("the first rule of decoration is that you can break almost all the other rules"), the clinamen is rule-breaking written into the rule-system itself. (Epicurus's swerve-as-chance lineage: not yet paged — see log.)
• Trace — the concept's negative limit: Bartlebooth's project was precisely to leave "no trace" — the clinamen as what guarantees traces (errors) survive every system.
• Potential Space — the openness the creak preserves: a fully coherent system closes the space of inquiry; the clinamen keeps it potential.
• Temporality — the system's enemy: death as the error no designer chooses but every design must accommodate.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Puzzle (Carley 2018) — the concept's source: the Epicurean definition ("The world functions because from the outset there is of a lack of balance"); Perec's chapter-66 explanation (the anticonstraint clause, the "creak"); the design moral (the master plan vs. death); the novel's suffered errors (the unrealized bi-square, the unvisited cellar, Valene's unfinished painting — via Mitchell).

Open Questions

• Is the clinamen one concept or two — the chosen error (design method) and the suffered error (fate)? Perec's practice includes both (the omitted chapter 66; the abandoned constraints), and Carley's moral merges them. If the design clinamen is only the chosen error, what is the name for the suffered one — and is the whole point that they are indistinguishable in the work?
• What is the built clinamen? Perec could delete a chapter; a building cannot delete a room once built. Is the architectural clinamen necessarily pre-executed (the deliberately un-designed margin, the provoked error) — and does that change its function from vitality to safety valve?
• The clinamen implies every strong system needs a designed weakness. Does this contradict the ideal of the hyperorganized interior (Melchionne), or complete it — is the "creak" the one concession that lets a total system be lived in?