SOURCE: “From Ontological Difference to Ontological Holism: Gilles Deleuze,” in Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997, pp. 165-201.

In the following essay, May assesses Deleuze's ontological claims about the concept of difference and discusses the juxtaposition of unity and difference in his work.

The final study I want to undertake here concerns the ontological reflections on difference offered by Gilles Deleuze. In an important sense, Deleuze's considerations upon difference diverge from those of the previous three thinkers. As we have seen, for Nancy, Derrida, and Levinas, difference has been conceived in terms of absence, on the assumption that to conceive it otherwise is to reduce it to categories of the same. Deleuze, in contrast, wants to articulate a difference in terms other than those of absence. He wants to articulate a “positive” difference that, while similar to Nancy's and Derrida's in being...