Book ReviewsJames 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’sDifference and Repetition (hereafter DR), “the book is as difficult as it is important” (2). This is certainlytrue of DR, in which Deleuze attempts to prioritize the principle of difference over the principleof 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 whileliberating those of us who, like this author, are not completely au fait with the intricacies of Deleuzianthought, 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 argumentscontained in Deleuze’s book. Williams treats DR—uncontroversially, I think—as the “keystone”of Deleuze’s work taken as a whole, and also as a book that is of deep significance to thebroader history of philosophy. His introduction spells out the finer details of this broader significanceof DR, in addition to offering some admirably concise explanations of the book’s main themesand concerns. These, of course, include Deleuze’s definition of reality as “both the virtual and theactual” (7), his arguments against the restriction of reality to “actual identifiable things,” which turnon the concept of “difference-in-itself,” which Williams redefines as “pure difference” (11), and theinteraction 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 DRby means of sensible organization combined with sensitive reading. In each chapter, Williamsfocuses on a particular section of DR, beginning with its introduction and the preface, in whichDeleuze “situates his work in the philosophical context of the turn to difference that gathers pacethrough the twentieth century” (25), moving through chapters on “Difference,” “Repetition,” argumentsagainst common sense, the nature of the “Idea,” and the nature of “Reality,” and ending witha conclusion that reaches, like DR, “Beyond the Self.” Throughout the book, Williams takes greatcare to emphasize what for him, ultimately, count as the dominant principles of Deleuze’s philosophy:the linked claims that “we should seek the most complete expression of reality as possible butthat this requires creation rather than discovery” (197).Williams is not slow to acknowledge and to explore the difficulties that Deleuze’s thinking mustovercome, 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 challengeposed by the equivocal nature of being, where the “relation between different existents is analogical”(59, 63). As Williams explains, a response to this challenge is incumbent on Deleuze in the lightof his reading of Aristotle, which seeks to show how and why Aristotle missed a deeper understandingof the concept of “difference.” But how exactly does Williams understand the challengeto Deleuzian ontology? According to him, the equivocal nature of being revives a principle of determinationof identity at the expense of the Deleuzian principle of connection; meaning, Williamsexplains, that “it’s what you are, not what you connect to. . . . What you are disconnects you fromother things, once and for all” (63). The real problem, as he recognizes, is that this also raises theJOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Issue 31, 2006Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.61specter of Cartesian analysis. In what follows, Williams shows us how and why Deleuze must enableus to stop thinking of existence “primarily as the existence of a well-defined thing”; only then canhis case be made as to how we can determine difference without defining it in terms of identity orrepresentation—specifically, how we are to arrive at the philosophically vital idea of difference-initself.Nietzsche is of intrinsic importance to Deleuze, and hence it is hardly surprising that Williamsshould need to account for certain of Deleuze’s uses of Nietzschean doctrines in order to render DRaccessible. Williams’s second chapter includes a solid, if perhaps overly brief, discussion of the wayin which Nietzsche and Kierkegaard come together in DR to yield a view of philosophy and metaphysicsas theater (44–46). As Williams acknowledges, however, apart from the incorporation ofKierkegaard into the discussion, and Deleuze’s consequent grounding of his reading of Freud andmasks 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, Williamsshows how we can locate Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return at the heart of the Deleuzian principleof forgetting, which counts as affirmation of that which is left behind, and, hence, which enablesus 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 alsocognizant of where the two philosophers part company. In his fourth chapter, which deals with thetheme of repetition, Williams explains the distinction between Nietzschean and Deleuzian eternalreturn in terms of the nature of time. Returning to the principle of difference-as-repetition, or whathe styles “pure difference,” Williams shows how Deleuze moves beyond his Nietzschean heritageby 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” definedthrough intensity (184). Admittedly, Williams does not spend a great deal of time dealing with theevident 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 onDeleuze’s use of Nietzsche. While the reader might well wish to see more discussion of Deleuzeand 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 Deleuzianprinciples and concerns. The result is a guide to Deleuze’s “masterwork” that is accessible andindeed encouraging to advanced students and to philosophers new to Deleuze, yet which can constitutea valuable aid to research for more committed readers of Deleuze. In addition, the book doescater to the interests of Nietzsche scholars, and will be of particular value to those with a stronginterest 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, inDeleuze. In any case, one could certainly do a lot worse than to put Williams’s enthusiasm forDeleuze to work in developing a greater understanding of him. This critical introduction and guidekeeps its promises, offering a critique of no little scholarly merit alongside clear, concise, and accessibleexposition, and it steers its way skillfully through what might otherwise remain the “murkysurface” of DR (2).Rhodes University, South Africa62 BOOK REVIEWS