ABSTRACT
To begin with this date is to begin with an apparently individual or individuated subject. Rather an odd opening to a chapter you may think. A date? What is so individuated about a date? Dates are public; they announce the ordering of time as a series of (repeatable) events. Yet the public ordering of time makes sense in relation to the personal stories we create: ‘On this date I … Do you remember when we … That is when you … ’. The relation between the public ordering of time and the (apparently) private reordering is determinate and unstable. The public ordering depends precisely on not ‘belonging’ to the individual subject (there must be consensus on how we measure our lives – these ‘rules’ must pre-exist individuation), and yet only makes sense through being inhabited, that is, through being given animation as life.
