But is this rupture a matter of temperal succession? Does the other beginning need to come 'after' the first beginning? It would seem that, in Heidegger's notion of a 'turning' within Ereignis, it is not so much a change of direction or heading within history, that same and very history from which it would depart, which is in question. Rather, it would seem that an altogether different move is announced: an unfolding of time and space that is entirely heterogeneous to history understood as the history of the abandonment by and of being (Seinsverlassenheit), and event that is incommensurable with any occurrence taking place in space and time, an event the repetition of which would not be reducible to the succession of its chronological inscriptions. It would mark something like the beginning of history as such, given the fact that, for that time, history would unfold, a site would open up, on the basis of the essemce of history itself--that is, truth--having explicitly come to the fore. In that respect, the other beginning would consist in taking up again and anew what was left behind and abandoned in the first beginning. It would amount to a repetition of history from the point of view of its forgotten origin. Nothing 'more' would take place in that repetition; history would not become the site of a 'new' event. Rather, what would take place and, in thus taking place, would constitute an event of an unequalled and incompatible nature, is the taking place of place itself (as Augenblicksstätte), the event of the event (of beyng). Would that be history, then, at least understood from this 'turning' in which everything is transformed? The temporality of repetition is intriguing and complex; if, in the other beginning, that beginning that is to open onto, not yet another epoch or moment in history, but an altogether different history, one does not turn away from the 'old', but turns to it as if for the first time, that is, turns to what is forgotten and abandoned in the first beginning, then, to a certain extent, that history of the first beginning can be said to linger on; to a certain extent, it remains intact, untouched. And yet, on another level, it is profoundly subverted--for it now relates to the world in such a way that the world speaks from its unspoken and hidden ground, from the abyss onto which it opens and which sustains it. In a way, then, I would like to suggest that the other beginning does not succeed the first beginning, and that the temporality that is at stake in the other beginning escapes chronology altogether. The 'first' and the 'other' beginning can coincide, for the simple reason that they respond to two entirely different temporalities: their reaction is one of chronological coincidence and historical disjunction. The time of the other beginning is the time that turns back onto the time-space of being as the presupposed and forgotten ground of the first beginning. It is time that at once makes possible and exceeds chronological time, and this means the time of things and of the world--it is the time that is otherwise than worldly, or the time of the earth.

P. 86

¶ 7:18 AM