Difference is one of the most influential critical concepts of recent decades. Mark Currie offers a comprehensive account of the history of the term and its place in some of the most influential schools of theory of the past four decades, including: * post-structuralism

* deconstruction

* new historicism

* psychoanalysis

* French feminism

* postcolonialism. Employing literary case studies throughout, Difference provides an accessible introduction to a term at the heart of today's critical idiom.