`r' Death is therefore multiple, and dispersed in time: it is not that absolute, privileged point at which time stops and moves hack; like disease itself, it has a teeming presence that analysis may divide into time and space; gradually, here and there, each of the knots breaks, until organic life ceases, at least in its major forms, since long after the death of the individual, minuscule, partial deaths continue to dissociate the islets of life that still subsist.