Name: Difference and Repetition
ISBN: 9781441180124

Difference and Repetition

Difference and Repetition, a brilliant exposition of the critique of identity, has come to be considered a contemporary classic in philosophy and one of Deleuze's most original works. Successfully defended in 1969 as Deleuze's main thesis toward his Doctorat d'Etat at the Sorbonne, the work has been central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx, towards Nietzsche and Freud. The text follows the development of two central concepts, those of pure difference and complex repetition. It shows how the two concepts are related - difference implying divergence and decentering, and repetition implying displacement and disguising. In its explication the work moves deftly between Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Althusser, and Nietzsche to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. Difference and Repetition has become essential to the work of literary critics and philosophers alike, and this translation his been long awaited.

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nathiasDec 2023

most of it is an attempt to escape Hegelianism/Marxism/psychoanalysis, but his earlier works (Difference and Repetition, Logic Of Sense) are much better in terms of accessibility, to me his best are books on other philosophers, on Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz.

The late stages of philosophers' works are often quite wacky.

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steveklabnikMar 2021

I really like DeLanda too. Other related folks I enjoy are Brian Massumi and John Protevi (who wrote the SEP page on Deleuze, IIRC).

I think the first order of business is to understand that there are kind of three Deleuzes: there's Deleuze, and then there's Deleuze and Guattari. Finally there's also his film stuff.

There's a connection between them, of course, but they're kind of two different projects. Deleuze on his own is a scholar of philosophical history; he wrote a lot of books on other philosophers. There's a sort of over-arching project though; he's creating a kind of "secret history" where all the folks he write about are all building towards something. They're generally regarded as good books, but they're also just as much a sort of product of how Deleuze sees them, rather than purely about them themselves. The most controversial (and arguably his best, IMHO) is Nietzsche and Philosophy. He draws a bunch from material that Nietzsche didn't actually publish before his death, and his sister kind of... selectively edited. It's a whole thing. Regardless, IMHO it's a good take. Reasonable people may disagree. In order, they're "Empiricism and Subjectivity," "Nietzsche and Philosophy," "Kant’s Critical Philosophy," "Proust and Signs," "Bergsonism," "Spinoza: Practical Philosophy," "Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature," "Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation," and "Foucault." That is... a lot. IMHO, Nietzche, Spinoza, Foucault, and Kafka are the big ones, if you don't want to read like, ten books about ten people you probably haven't read yet. You can follow these up with "Difference and Repetition," his primary thesis, and "Logic of Sense," his final solo work before meeting Guattari. He wrote these in between some of those solo works, but IMHO, they make sense as a unit, with these as the end, even if they weren't written in that order.

Oh, and https://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/societyofcontr...

His mind-meld with Guattari has a lot of the themes of his solo work, but is much more experimental and out there. A Thousand Plateaus is, well, you already know this: pretty friggin' wild. So it's not so much "student of philosophical history" as it is "holy shit." To me at least. This is the stuff DeLanda and a lot of secondary literature engages with,

Oh, and I really love "What is Philosophy?" even if it's a less intense, more straightforward text.

Finally, film Deleuze. I've always wanted to study film but never managed to. I don't have much to say about this.

Oh gosh, that's a lot of works and orderings, but uh, yeah. Actual strategy. IMHO, if you don't have a foundation in Marx, all of this is going to be really tough. Make sure you understand at least a good chunk of Capital Volume I, the first three chapters (aka part i) are the most important, parts VI, V, and VIII aren't necessary, but Marx is pretty foundational. Even if folks don't agree with him, everyone is familiar with him, and often speak in his terms, and you have to be able to understand something to reject it. Many do agree, to be clear, just like... it's foundational. David Harvey can help there, he's not always perfect but he's better than most.

From there, what I personally did was read On the Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche. Then Discipline and Punish by Foucault. Then the Deleuze.

I am less well read with Freud than I should be to truly engage with Anti-Oedipus, but Civilization and its Discontents is worthwhile. Same with Marx, many many disagree, but all assume some level of familiarity.

Really, the best you can do is exactly what Massumi says about A Thousand Plateaus and "read it like a record":

> How should A Thousand Plateaus be played? When you buy a record there are always cuts that leave you cold. You skip them. You don't approach a record as a closed book that you have to take or leave. Other cuts you may listen to over and over again. They follow you. You find yourself humming them under your breath as you go about your daily business.

Read some stuff, if you get to things you don't understand, go follow the citation and try to dig into that. Get that you probably won't really grok things the first time you read them, be curious, dig into stuff you like, ignore stuff that doesn't resonate, maybe come back to it later if your tastes change.

Good luck :)

Oh, one final thing: Ignore the "dark deleuze" garbage. It's bad. I literally forgot it existed because I wish it did not, but this is the internet so...

EDIT 2: oh my gosh. also, for computer folks: Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, by Galloway. Not strictly Deleuzian, but related, and useful.

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nathiasFeb 2019

Plato - Meno, Symposium, Parmenides, Gorgias, Protagoras

Plotinus -Enneads

Markus Aurelius - Meditations

Descartes - On method

Descartes - Meditations

Spinoza - On the improvement of Understanding

Leibniz - Monadology

Leibniz - Grace

Voltaire - Candid

Diderot - D'Alembert's Dream

Kant - How to orient oneself in thinking

Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

Kant - Critique of Judgment

Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit

Hegel - Logic

von Kleist - Marionette Theatre

Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death

Heidegger - Being and Time

Sartre - Being and Nothingness

Sartre - Flies

Sartre - Nausea

Deleuze - Difference and Repetition

Kafka - Metamorphosis

Kafka - The Castle

Lem - Magellan Nebula

Lem - His Master's Voice

Cioran - A Short History of Decay

Pessoa - Book Of Despair

Wolfe - New Sun tetralogy

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FreakLegionJan 2013

>I am not perfectly happy with 'role' to be honest, but was trying to find a good analogy for those who haven't read my influences.

I've always appreciated the simplicity of Heidegger's way of talking about this in terms of 'as' vs. 'is.' There's a degree of abstraction there that, I suppose, may not work for everyone, but I find it encapsulates the issue quite well. Deleuze is also excellent here -- I saw you mentioned BwO (and have Nomadology referenced in your profile), but I think you would particularly like The Fold and parts of Difference and Repetition, both of which approach the 'is' as endlessly, imperfectly repeated 'as', much the way one thinks of DNA mutatedly reproducing itself. Making a mental note to raid my library tonight and pull out some choice bits to send your way.

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msutherlJun 2012

"It may be asked why it is even worth spending time on these remnants of the utterly discredited postmodernist movement."

This is just so ignorant and backward that I have a hard time taking the author of this article seriously. There is no "postmodernist movement". The term refers to a hopelessly large field of practices. Most great so-called "postmodernist" theorists typically have not referred to themselves as such.

If you want to discredit theorists who have been critical of scientific practices, you need to put down the Sokal and actually engage with specific works. You might be surprised to find that many of these "postmodernists" are either trained scientists or actually know what they're talking about. Just a few suggestions if you want to dip your toes in the water:

– Gilles Deleuze wrote powerfully on metaphysics, integrating many incites from mathematics in the 60's and 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics Check out "Difference and Repetition".

– Alain Badiou uses set theory in his ontology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou#Mathematics_as_ont... – I find his ontology lacking though; he should learn something from the failings of set theory in the early 20th century.

– Bruno Latour in a the domain of Science and Technology Studies has written voluminously about scientific and technological practices from a more anthropological point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography

– Isabelle Stengers has written something more along the lines of what's critiqued in this article, a critique of the authority of science in society: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabell... – works like this question whether the privileging of science over all other forms of knowledge is good for society. This particular work argues that it is not.

– Mike Cooley argues powerfully that the deskilling of the engineering industry caused by computer-aided design and manufacturing is a travesty: http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Bee-Human-Technology-Relatio...

A general note about so-called "postmodernism". The Wikipedia definition includes the following:

"Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. In essence, it is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality."

It's important to understand that "postmodernism" isn't critiquing the effectiveness of science. It is merely claiming that, as it says, reality is not mirrored in human understanding. The models we create to explain observed phenomena are not direct reflections of reality, they are simply characteristically human, linguistic models that correspond to our observations. As Niels Bohr wrote:

"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature..."

The question is whether our habit of elevating scientific explanation to the 'one true truth' is (1) right and (2) a good thing. Most "postmodernists" argue that other forms of knowledge are perfectly legitimate (for instance, indigenous people who still live tribally lead perfectly happy lives without science) and that the privileging of science over other forms of knowledge is not a unilaterally good thing (for instance, it is reasonable to say there's a decent change that we will extinguish ourselves as a species in the next hundred years thanks to the exploits of scientifically advanced societies).

You may notice that both of those examples are anthropological. This hints at something very important about "postmodernism". When people talk about "postmodernism", they're often talking about "post-structuralism", which is another hopelessly broad category referring to theory that in some way extends "structuralism", which is in turn closely connected to the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the "father of modern anthropology". "Postmodernism" can be seen in this sense to be a kind of anthropologically informed philosophy. Rather than creating theoretically sound abstract models, they look at how those models actually play out "in the field" and draw conclusions. Hence the critique of science: despite the power of scientific explanation, it may not necessarily result in a better society and indeed the evidence shows that it does not.

And one final point, the author is totally wrong to claim that scientists have not been concerned with the philosophy of science. Many early twentieth century scientists – the ones who create the theory of relatively and quantum physics especially – even wrote books on the philosophy of science as well as its role in society. Some examples:

– Schrödinger - "What is Life": http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches...

– Herman Weyl ("His overall approach in physics was based on the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, specifically Husserl's 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl

– Heisenberg - "Physics and Philosophy": http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Philosophy-Revolution-Modern-S...

– David Bohm - "Wholeness and the Implicate Order": http://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-David-Bohm/d...

Here's a more modern book from an economist that references Deleuze and other "post-structuralists":

– "The Blank Swan": http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470...

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hackandthinkDec 2023

In think Sokal is right. The postmodern academic left is a phenomenon of decay and is not helpful for traditional left-wing goals such as social justice.

On the other hand, I think Deleuze has a deep understanding of philosophy and, to some extent, mathematics. Deleuze always tries to make a transition from traditional theories to his extreme conception of difference and repetition.

It's crazy, but it has a certain genius.

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