Gilles Deleuze’s “Difference and Repetition”: A Critical Introduction

and Guide
Bamford, Rebecca.

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 31, Spring 2006, pp. 61-62
(Review)

Published by Penn State University Press

DOI: 10.1353/nie.2006.0001

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nie/summary/v031/31.1bamford.html

Access Provided by University of Minnesota -Twin Cities Libraries at 03/18/11 3:55PM GMT
 Book Reviews

James Williams. Gilles Deleuze’s “Difference and Repetition”: A Critical Introduction and Guide.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

REBECCA BAMFORD

“Like most works of great philosophical originality,” writes James Williams of Gilles Deleuze’s
Difference and Repetition (hereafter DR), “the book is as difficult as it is important” (2). This is cer-
tainly true of DR, in which Deleuze attempts to prioritize the principle of difference over the prin-
ciple of identity, all within the framework of a critique of the history of Western philosophy.
Thankfully, however, Williams’s reading of Deleuze is able to capture the originality of DR while
liberating those of us who, like this author, are not completely au fait with the intricacies of Deleuzian
thought, from some of the quandaries engendered by its inherent complexity.
In writing this book, Williams’s intention is to critically analyze the methodology and the argu-
ments contained in Deleuze’s book. Williams treats DR—uncontroversially, I think—as the “key-
stone” of Deleuze’s work taken as a whole, and also as a book that is of deep significance to the
broader history of philosophy. His introduction spells out the finer details of this broader signifi-
cance of DR, in addition to offering some admirably concise explanations of the book’s main themes
and concerns. These, of course, include Deleuze’s definition of reality as “both the virtual and the
actual” (7), his arguments against the restriction of reality to “actual identifiable things,” which turn
on the concept of “difference-in-itself,” which Williams redefines as “pure difference” (11), and the
interaction between the virtual and the actual in terms of repetition (11–12).
Subsequent chapters deal with these and other themes in much greater, and far more critical,
detail. Williams’s methodology achieves the distinctive, persuasive argument characteristic of DR
by means of sensible organization combined with sensitive reading. In each chapter, Williams
focuses on a particular section of DR, beginning with its introduction and the preface, in which
Deleuze “situates his work in the philosophical context of the turn to difference that gathers pace
through the twentieth century” (25), moving through chapters on “Difference,” “Repetition,” argu-
ments against common sense, the nature of the “Idea,” and the nature of “Reality,” and ending with
a conclusion that reaches, like DR, “Beyond the Self.” Throughout the book, Williams takes great
care to emphasize what for him, ultimately, count as the dominant principles of Deleuze’s philoso-
phy: the linked claims that “we should seek the most complete expression of reality as possible but
that this requires creation rather than discovery” (197).
Williams is not slow to acknowledge and to explore the difficulties that Deleuze’s thinking must
overcome, and this tendency lends both clarity and strength to his reading of DR. As one example,
we can take Williams’s claim (in chapter 3) that Deleuze’s ontology must respond to the challenge
posed by the equivocal nature of being, where the “relation between different existents is analogi-
cal” (59, 63). As Williams explains, a response to this challenge is incumbent on Deleuze in the light
of his reading of Aristotle, which seeks to show how and why Aristotle missed a deeper under-
standing of the concept of “difference.” But how exactly does Williams understand the challenge
to Deleuzian ontology? According to him, the equivocal nature of being revives a principle of deter-
mination of identity at the expense of the Deleuzian principle of connection; meaning, Williams
explains, that “it’s what you are, not what you connect to. . . . What you are disconnects you from
other things, once and for all” (63). The real problem, as he recognizes, is that this also raises the

JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Issue 31, 2006

Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

61
62 BOOK REVIEWS

specter of Cartesian analysis. In what follows, Williams shows us how and why Deleuze must enable
us to stop thinking of existence “primarily as the existence of a well-defined thing”; only then can
his case be made as to how we can determine difference without defining it in terms of identity or
representation—specifically, how we are to arrive at the philosophically vital idea of difference-in-
itself.
Nietzsche is of intrinsic importance to Deleuze, and hence it is hardly surprising that Williams
should need to account for certain of Deleuze’s uses of Nietzschean doctrines in order to render DR
accessible. Williams’s second chapter includes a solid, if perhaps overly brief, discussion of the way
in which Nietzsche and Kierkegaard come together in DR to yield a view of philosophy and meta-
physics as theater (44–46). As Williams acknowledges, however, apart from the incorporation of
Kierkegaard into the discussion, and Deleuze’s consequent grounding of his reading of Freud and
masks in terms of the way in which both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard “do theatre in philosophy” (45),
this is familiar ground for readers of Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962). In chapter 3, Williams
shows how we can locate Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return at the heart of the Deleuzian princi-
ple of forgetting, which counts as affirmation of that which is left behind, and, hence, which enables
us to become “conscious of the erasure of identity in eternal return but only after the fact” (78).
However, appreciation of Nietzsche’s influence upon Deleuze notwithstanding, Williams is also
cognizant of where the two philosophers part company. In his fourth chapter, which deals with the
theme of repetition, Williams explains the distinction between Nietzschean and Deleuzian eternal
return in terms of the nature of time. Returning to the principle of difference-as-repetition, or what
he styles “pure difference,” Williams shows how Deleuze moves beyond his Nietzschean heritage
by relying on “the eternal return of difference and the impossibility of the return of the same” (103).
Hence for Williams’s Deleuze, eternal return “must be eternal return of pure differences” defined
through intensity (184). Admittedly, Williams does not spend a great deal of time dealing with the
evident Nietzschean influences upon DR. But we should note that Williams is not in the business
of offering a distinctively Nietzschean critique of DR; nor is he especially interested in focusing on
Deleuze’s use of Nietzsche. While the reader might well wish to see more discussion of Deleuze
and Nietzsche, this is beyond the remit of Williams’s book.

There is no doubt that James Williams’s book is a significant contribution to Deleuze scholarship.
Williams balances his evident passion for Deleuze with a clear, yet erudite exposition of Deleuzian
principles and concerns. The result is a guide to Deleuze’s “masterwork” that is accessible and
indeed encouraging to advanced students and to philosophers new to Deleuze, yet which can con-
stitute a valuable aid to research for more committed readers of Deleuze. In addition, the book does
cater to the interests of Nietzsche scholars, and will be of particular value to those with a strong
interest in Nietzsche’s views on metaphysics or in Nietzsche’s place in the history of philosophy—
scholars with such interests can certainly find a great ally, or at least a source of inspiration, in
Deleuze. In any case, one could certainly do a lot worse than to put Williams’s enthusiasm for
Deleuze to work in developing a greater understanding of him. This critical introduction and guide
keeps its promises, offering a critique of no little scholarly merit alongside clear, concise, and acces-
sible exposition, and it steers its way skillfully through what might otherwise remain the “murky
surface” of DR (2).

Rhodes University, South Africa