Abstract

Along with the concept of difference, the ontological concept of repetition has many important drifts in Deleuze’s work. In this article, I shall analyze the concept of repetition that appears in Difference and Repetition, while also reviewing the precursory philosophies pertaining to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Péguy in relation to this topic. It will be shown that, although repetition is, in principle, an ontological category that fulfills an eminent role in relation to time and the constitution of subjectivity, it also has been subject to an ethical drift that questions the claims of the moral law. This ethical drift places the concept of repetition in connection with issues and problems that would later appear in the ethico-political texts that Deleuze wrote along with Guattari. I will refer to this connection in greater depth at the end of the article, demonstrating how the structural framework of notions that make up the thinking about repetition is implicit in Deleuze’s later works on the concepts of minority and majority.