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This brilliant exposition of the critique of identity is a classic in contemporary philosophy and one of Deleuzes most important works. Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers,Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts--pure difference and complex repetition--and shows how the two concepts are related. While difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with displacement and disguising. Central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx toward Nietzsche and Freud, Difference and Repetition moves deftly to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics.
Rate Points :5.0
Binding :Paperback
Label :Columbia University Press
Manufacturer :Columbia University Press
ProductGroup :Book
Studio :Columbia University Press
Publisher :Columbia University Press
EAN :9780231081597
Price :$24.95USD
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Customer ReviewsThe brilliance of Deleuze
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :14
Difference and Repetition is the most brilliant work of philosophy I have read. However the book does rely on a huge amount of background knowledge which took my over a year and a half to compile. My advice for any reader attempting to read D&R is to read Manuel DeLandas Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. All of the obscure references to mathematical and scientific concepts are throuroughly explicated in DeLandas book. I can honestly say that if it were not for Intensice Philsosophy and Virtual Science I would not have been able to comprehend the key philosophical concepts deployed in D&R such as singlarities as pre-individual attractors and the nature of the virtual.
D&R is a work which may require intense effort from the reader, as none of the concepts are adequately explained by deleuze himself. But the challenge is most rewarding as the book gives you the concepts to think about a world without pre established identities and stabilities. Only now is science beginning to comprehend the universe as inherently random and dynamical which gives rise to complex self organizing systems.
A classic of modern philosophy and a brilliant achievement by an author who thought outside all contemporary philosophical trends to overthrow the father of philosophy: Plato.
Much worth the effort, if a 19 year old Undergraduate can make sense of this book then anyone with enough time, patience and conceptualisation should be able to master this brilliant work.
Deleuze wasnt messing around here, seriously.
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :44
Many people consider this to be the cornerstone of Deleuzes 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 dont think so, but I also dont think were ready for this book yet, so I await Deleuzes Kojeve eagerly). Difference and Repetition is a front to back masterpiece, and on every page Deleuzes colossal creative genius is on full display. But, that doesnt mean youll like it--in fact, I bet you (in your heart of hearts) wont. And Im not challenging anyone--I dont even like it. Even stronger: I cant really fathom how it is POSSIBLE to like it. Let me tell you why, if you havent 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 Deleuzes take on those aspects (which I just dont see how you could grasp in any way but superficially from this book). Its 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 wont 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 books affect and greatness, but, no doubt, more than part of the reason why no one can (under)stand it.
Im not kidding when I say this: D&R is indisputably the most difficult piece of philosophy Ive 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 dont take my word for it. Try it, and be honest with yourself. Dont just get it so you can say "oh, come on, its 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 Hollands 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...
The Crux of Thought
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :15
It took me reading Deleuzes books on Kant, Bergson, Nietzsche, Foucault and his collaborations with Guattari in Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus to finally get through this book . Difference and Repetion explains all the others, but is incredibly dense and in no way an introduction to his thinking. If youre familiar with his project, however, then this brings the rest of his readings into focus.
Its in this book that Deleuze gets as close as he ever comes to replying to Hegel, and in that sense its here that he contends with the master and the dialectic--a battle or contest characteristic of his French compatriots (see Vincent Descombes fantastic book: Modern French Philosophy and Michael Hardts summary of the early Deleuzian projects: Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy). Difference and repetition are such an alternative to the dialectic that theyre difficult to grasp without a serious grounding in metaphysics (see his books on Kant and Hume especially), Spinoza, and Bergson.
Deleuze wants to show that there is a materiality of expression that is also a movement within time, an unfolding that is also a becoming ( and in this sense in contrast to Being). This movement image (which founds his analysis in the Cinema books) grounds for Deleuze a transcendental empiricism, which is to say a non-conceptual and material, positive and affirmative idea of thought. Read his books on Kant and Hume first for an overview of his critique of representation.
I think this book is stunning, and i hope to read it over and over. The first three chapters are incredible, and amount to nothing short of a complete undoing of representational thought, or what he characterizes as a logic of the same.
Grounding a Philosophy of Difference
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :17
This is (arguably) the most important work written by Deleuze for a reason that seems to me is often obscured or merely forgotten: it is (maybe) the only work that seeks to lay the foundation for a systematic treatment of difference and by ex-tension (or in-tension) repetition. It does not seek to derive difference and repetition (simply) from identity and the in-dividual. It seeks to think of difference and repetition in themselves. And this is what is important here: thinking (and not some petty play of figures and words in the frontal attacks or soul mating with particular thinkers) in its rhizomatic form rather than its arborescent one.
What is therefore central in this work is idea, and (therefore) perception. In simple terms, Deleuze has managed to provide us with some foundational links with the philosophies of mind, language and time (and moreover besides). He has given to the philosophy of difference a central and unifying role (across such and other disciplines) to play.
In this sense difference and repetition are not only (simply) linked between them (in the sense that one leads to the other), but also linked with other important notions usually discussed and developed in other (philosophical) disciplines. Let me provide some brief indications.
Chapter 1 is concerned with difference, not as mere diversity, otherness or negation, bur rather as general or specific difference, where the latter refers to the moment when difference is reconciled with the concept in general. In this manner, Deleuze sees difference as a concept of reflection in relation to representation that involves movement. He further discusses the notion of eternal return and questions the adoption of a meta-viewpoint for thinking about difference and repetition - the latter being the relation between originals and simulacra.
In chapter 2, Deleuze lays out the relation between (the dualities) repetition and sensing, habit, and difference, under the guise that "difference inhabits repetition", in that it "lies between two repetitions" (p.76). He also makes the distinction between natural and artificial signs, hence the distinction between two types of difference, one being the expression of the other. In parallel, he distinguishes active from passive synthesis (relative to time) in that "the activity of thought applies to a receptive being, to a passive subject" (p.86). Finally drawing on Bergson, he distinguishes the real centre from where emanates a series of perception-images from a virtual centre from where emanates a series of memory-images.
Chapter 3 is for Deleuze the most important (sic) because the thinking of difference and repetition is based on a dogmatic image of thought characterised by eight postulates, each with a dual form, the artificial and the natural.
In Chapter 4, this duality underlies the development of the notion of idea in that it is problematic, hence dialectical, an "n-dimensional, continuous, defined multiplicity" (p.182) in a perplication as the distinctive and coexistent state of ideas. Each idea is thus linked with difference and representation in that "the representation of difference refers to the identity of the concept as its principle" (p.178). In this manner he makes the claim for the superiority of problematic-questioning approach over the (traditional) hypothetico-apodictic approach because questions are imperatives.
Chapter 5 starts with the claim that "difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse" (p.222). Difference is therefore (a given) intensity expressed as extensity. There is depth that unites intensity and extensity. Therefore, depth is the intensity of being from where emerge at once extensity and the qualities of being. In this manner Deleuze accepts a dual condition of difference: one natural and one artificial.
In the concluding chapter Deleuze argues that representation is a site of transcendental illusion which comes in four interrelated forms relative to thought, sensibility, idea and being. Hence the problematic of grounding representation and his argument (or Idea) for groundlessness, and the justification of the use of (systems of) simulacra as sites for the actualisation of ideas. Hence that of difference and repetition where the former is not only located between the levels and degrees of the latter, but also has two faces, namely, habit and memory.
Overall, despite the difficulty of the text itself as it takes for granted knowledge of the philosophies of some other thinkers (e.g. Bergson), it is a central text in the philosophy of difference and for just this reason, a text one must have read!
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :19
Difference and repetition struck me as nothing Ive ever read before has struck me. The fun thing about "reading" it, is that, when you think about it, the act of reading itself makes understanding parts of this work more clear. Reading this becomes a "machinic" activity as it were: immediate, affective, with its own unpredictability, with many gaps, moments of insight, despair, and so on. It seems contradictory, because I think it is the most rigorous and analytic of all of Deleuzes works. But it is immensely dense, as other reviewers also say.
It is certainly the crucial work in his oeuvre. Really if you have tried it a few times, you will notice that many ideas of his later work are based on the crucial notions of this grand exploration. Anti-Oedipe is such a delight to read and easy to understand after this one.
And I think it is good for those who want to approach Deleuzes thought, to start with the Anti-Oedipus and Mille Plateaux, then read some of the smaller and intensive works (What is philosophy, Leibniz et le Baroque). Then try this book. You will get many references and want to read all others once again.
It is clearly in this work that you will find the first monstrous and frontal attack against Hegels dialectic. The fun thing is that this is a complete "anti-work". Every conceivable concept of modern philosophy (from the concept of "common sense", "history", or "being") gets an "anti", with which Deleuze consistently builds his grand idea of the immediate, the pre- or non-representational and the virtual--against any metaphysics. It is moreover his first, and I think also his last work where he builds his philosophy in a consistent manner.
After this one, I think he started exploring fragments of his thought more deeply, in his other works, which are derivatives so to speak. This is his goodbye to classic French philosphy (strong tradition of exploring the "history of philosophy") and his entre into his own experimentation with the concepts he just developed.
To conclude, just some practical notes. The problem with the book is that, unlike his other works, you have to read all of it (because it is so consistent). This makes it a project for months, or even years. Good luck.
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