PART I

1907–1923

Neither synchrony nor diachrony, an anachrony of every instant. Demourance (old French had such a word) as anachrony. There is no single time, and since there is no single time, since no instant shares a measure with any other—thanks to death, thanks to death coming between, thanks to interruption by cause of death intervening, if you will, by cause of passing-away—well, there is no chronology or chronometry. Even when the sense of the real has been regained, time cannot be measured. And thus the question returns, how many times: how much time? How much time? How much time?

JACQUES DERRIDA, Demeure: Fiction and Testimony