Dun Scotus’ concept of the haecceity – the ‘here and now’ – seems particularly apposite here. Deleuze and Guattari seize upon this in A Thousand Plateaus as a depersonalised mode of individuation in which everything – the breath of the wind, the quality of the light – plays a part. A certain use of film – think, particularly, of the aching stillness in Kubrick and Tarkovsky – seems especially set up to attune us to haecceity; as does the polaroid, a capturing of a haecceity which is itself a haecceity.
