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we
can see that historical periodization belongs to an
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obsession
that is characteristic of modernity.
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Periodization
is a way of placing events in a diachrony,
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and
diachrony is ruled by the principle of revolution. In
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the
same way that modernity contains the promise of its
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overcoming,
it is obliged to mark, to date, the end of one
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period
and the beginning of the next. Since one is
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inaugurating
an age reputed to the entirely new, it is right
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to
set the clock to the new time, to start it from zero again.
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In
Christianity, Cartesianism or Jacobinism, this same
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gesture
designates a Year One, that of revelation and
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redemption
in the one case, of rebirth and renewal in the
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second,
or again of revolution and reappropriation of
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liberties.
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