SOURCE: “Literary History and Criticism,” in French Review, Vol. 69, No. 5, April, 1996, pp. 793-94.

In the following positive assessment of Difference and Repetition, Williams considers the significance of Deleuze's concept and treatment of difference in his work.

In his new preface to this English edition of Différence et répétition (originally published in France in 1968), Deleuze argues that the book's fundamental aim of thinking difference “in itself” (xv) is central to all his subsequent work and lays the ground for major ideas such as the “rhizome” developed in L'Anti-Œdipe (1972). Why, then, we have had to wait so long for it to become available to a wider audience is a mystery, although Derrida's cornering of the difference market is certainly a factor, as is the complex nature of the study itself. For Difference and Repetition not only offers a critique of Western philosophy and metaphysics (in particular...