Abstract

Just how eternal is the Eternal Return? This article examines how Foucault's readings of Nietzsche and of Deleuze critically revise the Return so as to arrive at a concept of contingency that is itself contingent. I argue that this archaeological/genealogical rereading problematises the Return as presented in Difference and Repetition; when the Return is presented as ‘the form of change [that] does not change’, it risks returning eternally to the Same – for all its avowed affirmation of difference. By returning the Return to its own historically contingent epistemic conditions of possibility, Foucault repeats Deleuze's philosophy with maximum difference.