Library Book
Difference and Repetition
Gilles Deleuze's 1968 thesis proposing difference as prior to identity, and repetition as productive rather than reproductive.
Published in France in 1968 as Différence et répétition (Deleuze’s doctoral thesis), Difference and Repetition argues against treating difference as merely a deviation from prior identity or resemblance — difference, for Deleuze, is prior and generative, with identity itself a secondary effect produced by repeated difference. Repetition is correspondingly reconceived as productive of the new rather than a return of the same. The book supplies the philosophical groundwork — multiplicity, intensity, the virtual — that Deleuze’s later collaborations with Félix Guattari build on. Translated into English by Paul Patton (Columbia University Press, 1994).