Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) was a French philosopher whose work spans metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, film theory, and literature. He is closely associated with post-structuralism and with a critical rethinking of psychology, capitalism, and desire. He collaborated extensively with Félix Guattari, with whom he wrote Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), forming the two-volume Capitalism and Schizophrenia project, and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1975). He also wrote The Logic of Sense (1969), Difference and Repetition (1968), and later Cinema books (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, 1983; Cinema 2: The Time-Image, 1985). What Is Philosophy? (1991) is another key work associated with his later thought.

Deleuze developed a philosophy of difference and becoming, challenging Hegelian notions of identity. He rejected essentialist models and proposed difference as prior to identity. Central notions include the body without organs, the rhizome, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, and desiring-production, emphasizing social and political multiplicity rather than fixed structures. In cinema and literature, he studied how images and texts constitute time and desire, highlighting movement, variability, and novelty.

He held academic positions at the University of Paris and later the Collège de France, teaching until his death in 1995. His work has influenced a wide range of fields, including philosophy, film theory, literature, cultural studies, and political theory, and remains influential for its experimental approach to power, subjectivity, and creativity.