Deleuze's 'Difference and Repetition': A Reader's Guide

by Joe Hughes

Gilles Deleuze is without question one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. "Difference and Repetition "is a classic work of contemporary philosophy and a key text in Deleuze's oeuvre, a brilliant exposition of the critique of identity that develops two key concepts: pure difference and complex repetition. "Deleuze's 'Difference and Repetition' A Reader's Guide "offers a concise and accessible introduction to this hugely important and yet notoriously demanding work.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction

232 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 12, 2009

Reviews

[Alice Nilsson]

If you want to read secondary material before you start D+R or can't break into it and get an understanding, read this book. Real easy 2 read and understand

[George]

This is surely one of the best guides to Difference and Repetition available. On the one hand it is consistently readable and accessible, because Hughes takes his time explaining and diagramming Deleuze's complex and proliferative vocabularies, and on the other hand it is not afraid to posit a strong and unifying reading of the book in comprehensive detail. Hughes goes through each chapter of the book in a methodical way, but he changes the order of the chapters slightly to counter the non-intuitive structure of the book, and he draws on a wide (but not overwhelming) selection of important primary texts to contextualise and clarify the book's argument. This guidebook picks up the main claim of Hughes' first monograph by focusing on Deleuze's Husserlian heritage; it also doesn't hesitate to offer the strong claim that "all of Deleuze's books develop the same conceptual structure," i.e. they are all accounts of the genesis of representation that are Kantian in spirit (i.e. they ask how we can proceed from the sensible to thought) (179).

The biggest flex of this guidebook is the fact that Hughes quotes from the French translations of other primary philosophical texts (not once, but twice) in order to clarify a point by invoking exactly what expressions Deleuze would have been reading. He does this both with Kant's first critique and with Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. An encyclopedic guide from an encyclopedic scholar.

[Campbell Rider]

Thorough and mostly very clear introduction — the points where clarity breaks down are more to do with the difficulty of Deleuze's text than with the guide itself. This book does a great job of making clear his relationship to and dependence on other thinkers such as Leibniz, Husserl, Heidegger, and (above all) Kant. In fact, this text could just be read as a commentary on Deleuze's reading of Kant, which is actually the angle I was looking for to begin with.

[Zoonanism]

One feels gratitude for works such as this...very clear exposition of a much hailed but nonsense text by Deleuze, a mess of colorless pink ideas sleeping furiously...forget Deleuze, this text being lucid may just help you see why you should.

[William]

This is an EXCELLENT introductory overview to this book, cannot recommend it enough.

[Christopher]

Lol i’m about to put this book down- something i never do

[CharlesS]

This is a brilliant text, taking on what Deleuze called "a real soup", that is, his major doctoral dissertation. Hughes provides readers access to a broad range of Deleuze's texts and seminars to clarify the "mystery novel" at the heart of this core work in Deleuze’s body of writing. I intend to go back to this book frequently with the main text D&R in hand.

August 2026: I wrote the previous lines four months ago, and have since reworked myself through Hughes's book alongside re-reading Difference and Repetition. Hughes really helps negotiate and explain some of the twists and turns, and particularly the stakes for Deleuze's different arguments.

[Naranovich]

Неплохой технический комментарий, с большой дидактикой старающийся следовать замыслу. Много (чересчур) внимания генезису понятий и традиции. Поэтому РиП предстает 100-процентной генеалогией сознания (the whole of Difference and Repetition is a theory of subjectivity), Делез — поумневшим феноменологом, а Вечное Возвращение — всего лишь, стыдно сказать, mediates the relationship between body and consciousness. Тем не менее, удобно для прослеживания связей с Гегелем-Ипполитом и Гуссерлем, особенно если нет времени браться ни за того, ни за другого.