Difference and Repetition

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Difference and Repetition

Cover of the first edition
Author	Gilles Deleuze
Original title	Différence et répétition
Translator	Paul R. Patton
Language	French
Series	Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine
Subjects	Difference Representation
Publisher	Presses Universitaires de France, Columbia University Press
Publication date	1968
Publication place	France
Published in English	1994
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages	350 (Columbia University Press edition)
ISBN	0-231-08159-6 (Columbia University Press edition)
OCLC	29315323
Dewey Decimal	194 22
LC Class	B2430.D453 D4513 1994b

Difference and Repetition (French: Différence et répétition) is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.

Difference and Repetition was Deleuze's principal thesis for the Doctorat D'Etat alongside his secondary, historical thesis, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza.

The work attempts a critique of representation. In the book, Deleuze develops concepts of difference in itself and repetition for itself, that is, concepts of difference and repetition that are logically and metaphysically prior to any concept of identity. Some commentators interpret the book as Deleuze's attempt to rewrite Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) from the viewpoint of genesis itself.^[1]

It has recently been asserted that Deleuze in fact re-centered his philosophical orientation around Gabriel Tarde's thesis that repetition serves difference rather than vice versa.^[2]