Difference and Repetition (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Translator) "Indifference has two aspects: the undifferenciated abyss, the black nothingness, the indeterminate animal in which everything is dissolved - but also the white nothingness, the..." (more)
Key Phrases: clothed repetition, orgiastic representation, larval subjects, Duns Scotus, Critique of Pure Reason, Lewis Carroll (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Definitely the most important work published by Deleuze. -- Edouard Morot-Sir, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This is a long-overdue, and skillful, translation of one of Deleuze´s most important and original works...It occupies an important place in Deleuze´s oeuvre as the first text, following a series of historical commentaries, in which he philosophizes on his own behalf. It occupies an equally important place in the evolution of French philosophy in the 20th century, as it articulates a profound critique of the philosophy of representation while constructing a metaphysics of difference freed from subordination to a logic of identity. While charting the development through the history of philosophy of the concepts of ‘pure difference´ and ‘complex repetition,´ Deleuze proposes a new image of thought, which readers familiar with his later works will recognize. A difficult and challenging text that has done as much as any to initiate the philosophy of difference that characterizes much recent French thought, this book is one of the classics of recent European philosophy. -- Review --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"This is a long-overdue, and skillful, translation of one of Deleuze's most important and original works...It occupies an important place in Deleuze's oeuvre as the first text, following a series of historical commentaries, in which he philosophizes on his own behalf. It occupies an equally important place in the evolution of French philosophy in the 20th century, as it articulates a profound critique of the philosophy of representation while constructing a metaphysics of difference freed from subordination to a logic of identity. While charting the development through the history of philosophy of the concepts of 'pure difference'and 'complex repetition,'Deleuze proposes a new image of thought, which readers familiar with his later works will recognize. A difficult and challenging text that has done as much as any to initiate the philosophy of difference that characterizes much recent French thought, this book is one of the classics of recent European philosophy." -- Alan Schrift, author of Nietzsche's French Legacy : A Genealogy of Poststructuralism

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Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (June 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231081596
• ISBN-13: 978-0231081597
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,568 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing, March 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Difference and Repetition (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) (Hardcover)

It has been said that Deleuze stands in a class all his own. Moving freely between the movements of structuralism, psychoanalysis, logical analysis, phenomenology, Kantian critique, and on, Deleuze proves unlocalizable in any one tradition (with the possible exception of a certain form of Bergsonism). Unlike other French philosophers from the school of sixty eight, Deleuze does not seem to fall into the so-called linguistic turn, but instead formulates a highly complex process philosophy capable of simultaneously accomodating these views and going beyond them.

_Difference and Repetition_ is perhaps the single most important text in Deleuze's corpus for understanding the nature of his project. It is likely that fans of _Anti-Oedipus_ and _A Thousand Plateaus_ will disagree with this assesment, but these latter texts only take on their full critical force when understood in light of this text.

The aims of _Difference and Repetition_ are two-fold: On the one hand, Deleuze presents his critique of what he calls "the image of thought" which, he contends, is a way of thinking that tends to dogmatically reinforce dominant ways of thinking. Here we are given Deleuze's critique of representation and identity and the grounds under which they become possible and come to totalize the field of thinking. On the other hand, _Difference and Reptition_ strives to formulate a new ontology and aesthetics capable of explaining the conditions under which it is possible for something new to be created. The result is that Deleuze is able to avoid substance metaphysics based on the matter/form distinction in order to formulate a metaphysics of morphogensis capable of explaining how forms themselves are generated. Thus Deleuze brings about a reversal of Platonism, such that beings are no longer seen as the realization of forms, but instead as the actualization of processes in becoming. Putting Deleuze's project in Kantian terms, difference becomes the cipher for a transcendental aesthetic that no longer shackles the different to the identical (Deleuze claims that the philosophical tradition is without a concept of difference, but has always subsumed difference under identity), repetition describes the modes of synthesis taking place in relating differences to differences through differences (Deleuze argues that repetition is not the repetition of the same but of a difference and is thus productive). The final two chapters of _Difference and Reptition_ then give a complex account of the process of individuation that takes place through difference and its synthesis by repetition in generating new forms out of problems, questions, and the intensities they produce. Where Kant had only been able to approach aesthetics from the perspective of the spectator and the subject, Deleuze produces an aesthetics of creation itself, where the aesthetic process becomes unbound from the subject and is the affirmative and productive power of being producing itself in and through itself.

This book is as difficult as it is rich, but will deeply reward the diligent reader with both a new perspective on the world and how we relate to it, and an increased understanding of what it means to do philosophy.

44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deleuze wasn't messing around here, seriously., November 13, 2002

By	C. C Chrappa (us) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Many people consider this to be the cornerstone of Deleuze's body of work, and in many ways it is. In many ways it is also invaluable, and perhaps the most significant piece of philosophy to emerge in the last half-century (though I don't think so, but I also don't think we're ready for this book yet, so I await Deleuze's Kojeve eagerly). Difference and Repetition is a front to back masterpiece, and on every page Deleuze's colossal creative genius is on full display. But, that doesn't mean you'll like it--in fact, I bet you (in your heart of hearts) won't. And I'm not challenging anyone--I don't even like it. Even stronger: I can't really fathom how it is POSSIBLE to like it. Let me tell you why, if you haven't already tried the beast a few times (in which case you know already).
D&R runs at a pace and a level of sophistication that perhaps no one in the world besides Deleuze himself could completely follow. It is assumed that not only are you familiar with the ins and outs of some of the most obscure aspects of people like Kant, Leibniz, and Bergson--but that you also be familiar with Deleuze's take on those aspects (which I just dont see how you could grasp in any way but superficially from this book). It's also assumed that you have experience in differential calculus and its theoretical underpinnings (granted mostly from Leibniz and Structuralism, but come on, who can really explain what a "singular point" is without it?). And to top all of that off, it is, very apparently (I won't say really) unwieldy and circulates between all of the above mentioned and more and much more in the snap of a finger. No doubt part of the book's affect and greatness, but, no doubt, more than part of the reason why no one can (under)stand it.
I'm not kidding when I say this: D&R is indisputably the most difficult piece of philosophy I've ever read. It will run off 15-20 dense pages at a time that are not just prolix and turgid, but sometimes senselessly so. Yeah, you wrestle with it about three or four times, you have your moments of lucidity, little chunks here and there that are admittedly shining examples of what sort of a writer Deleuze was and would become. But I repeat: you think Kant, Heidegger, Whitehead, Derrida, Jameson, and Hegel are difficult? I swear before everything holy and unholy this book that you might buy today is infinitely more difficult than anything any of them ever wrote.
But don't take my word for it. Try it, and be honest with yourself. Don't just get it so you can say "oh, come on, it's not that bad." Try and explain it, try and give accounts for your explanations, try and tie it all together, or not. Until I see a lucid exposition of this book (like Holland's for AO), I refuse to believe that anyone really likes it or understands its SPIRIT (not of course the letter, which anyone can get, and parrot). Yet--undoubtedly worth every minute of your time. Such is the enigma of Deleuze...

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An explosion in philosophy that is still going on., February 23, 2001

By	Karl Henzy (Newark, DE USA) - See all my reviews

Difference and Repetition is a megaton bomb exploding in Twentieth-Century philosophy. So why is it so many have never heard of it? Because the explosion is still happening, and will continue to happen, as thinkers inevitably go back to this text again and again. If we do not see the flames and the rubble, that is because this explosion is happening at a different speed, as Deleuze would say, in a time span that began in 1968 and will continue well into the decades to come.

It's a funny thing-while Derrida became a sensation in the 70s and 80s explicating the play of signifiers, this explosion of Deleuze's philosophy was already happening, but as yet with little notice. When people look back some day, this will be hard to understand.

Difference and Repetition is perhaps Deleuze's most difficult book, but everything from his later work is already here. It is a book to read over many times. If you're just starting with Deleuze and want to understand his philosophical project of overturning Platonism, perhaps it would be better to start with the essay, "Plato and the Simulacrum," which appears in the appendices of The Logic of Sense, a book Deleuze wrote the year after Difference and Repetition and one that is almost as important.

So what of D&R? What is about? No brief summary could do it justice, so the following must be thought of as grotesque parody whose only purpose is to send readers to the real thing. Difference is Being, which is ever and again expressed in Repetitions that are never the same. We are Repetitions. This is a philosophy of immanence-it is about what passes through us, through things, through thought. It is an attempt to think what is unthinkable and unsayable. Its philosophical precursors are Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson. It is a repetition of those philosophies, and yet fresh and new, a difference. As Deleuze says, a philosophy (or work of art) is to be evaluated by what it does to us, how it affects us, what it sets in motion within us and beyond us. On those terms, D&R is full of riches, but don't expect it to "hit you" all at once. This explosion is still happening ...