I was recently joking about the use of a “turn” to describe theoretical movements or epochs, like the linguistic turn and the more recent ontological turn. I was happy to find Derrida articulating the same point as my hokey-pokey joke: the point is to question the very idea that we (who? humans? animals? beings?) are beings that can define and situate ourselves in a “turn” or some such epochal shift or historical mutation.
I would therefore hesitate just as much to say that we are living through a historical turning point. The figure of the turning point implies a rupture or an instantaneous mutation whose model or figure remains, precisely, to be questioned. As for history, historicity, even historicality, those motifs belonging precisely—as we shall see in detail—to this auto-definition, this auto-apprehension, this auto-situation of man or of the human Dasein as regards what is living and animal life; they belong to this auto-biography of man, which I wish to call into question today. (Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p. 24)