The grand synthesis: Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Meaning

During 1968 and 1969, in the space of less than a year, Deleuze published over a thousand pages of material: Spinoza and the Problem of Expression (1968), Difference and Repetition (1968) and The Logic of Meaning (1969). Spinoza and the Problem of Expression resembles Deleuze’s earlier studies in its focus on the thought of a single individual and its use of a relatively traditional mode of exposition. Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Meaning, however, represent something new, for in these books Deleuze speaks ‘on his own behalf’1

and employs singular and challenging forms for the presentation of his thought. Difference and Repetition is an insistently abstract and demanding investigation of the concepts of differencein-itself and repetition-for-itself, replete with discussions of most of the major (and many of the minor) philosophers of the West, presented in a seemingly conventional expository form, but actually constructed like a topological puzzle. As Deleuze suggests, it is part detective story and part science fiction (DR 3), the philosophical counterpart of abstract art in its exposition of aconceptual concepts and an imageless image of thought (DR 354), whose use of the history of philosophy parallels that of collage in painting (DR 4). The Logic of Meaning is an equally learned but much more openly playful study that combines an interpretation of Stoic incorporeals with an analysis of the works of Lewis Carroll. A ‘logical and psychoanalytic novel’ (LS 7) presented in thirtyfour ‘series’, each devoted to the investigation of a specific paradox, The Logic of Meaning traverses much of the territory covered in Difference and Repetition, but

introduces at every stage new and unexpected perspectives on earlier themes that defy ready assimilation.