exposure, pt 5

We should be careful to distinguish events from encounters here. Encounters are provoked by events that come from the outside; in fact, it would be more proper to say that the event itself transports us outside time. The event has no time of its own, it is never present, it has no duration. It strikes like a bolt of lightning, or arrives as a herald from far away announcing the abolition of time. In the passionate event, for an infinite and infinitesimal moment, we escape the tedium and emptiness of prison time.... purely virtual. The event is thus not properly understood as a state of things. It may be actualized in a state of things or an encounter-- an arrangement of bodies, affects and so forth-- but it always remains distinct, outside that actualization, that state.... The event never occurs in time. It ruptures time, defies destiny-- time turns to dust.

- Michael Hardt - "Prison time," Yale French Studies Vol. 91, 1997, pg 71