Deleuze developed a metaphysics of pure difference and multiplicity in "Difference and Repetition" (1968), opposing the Platonic and Hegelian tradition that treats difference as derivative of prior identity. With Félix Guattari, in "Anti-Oedipus" (1972) and "A Thousand Plateaus" (1980), he critiqued psychoanalysis's Oedipal model of desire through the concept of desiring-production, and proposed the "rhizome" as a non-hierarchical model of thought and social organization opposed to hierarchical, tree-like ("arborescent") structures.
Intellectual setting
Deleuze and Guattari wrote "Anti-Oedipus" in the aftermath of May 1968, responding critically to what they saw as psychoanalysis's and Marxist orthodoxy's shared tendency to reduce desire and revolutionary potential to fixed, familial or ideological structures.
Key ideas
Difference prior to identity
Deleuze argued that Western philosophy from Plato to Hegel subordinates difference to identity, treating it as a deviation from some prior sameness; he proposed instead a metaphysics in which difference and multiplicity are primary and identity is a derived, secondary effect.
The rhizome
Developed with Guattari, the rhizome is a model of thought and organization built from horizontal, non-hierarchical connections between heterogeneous elements, opposed to the hierarchical, unified "tree" structure they saw as characterizing traditional systems of thought and social order.
Legacy
Deleuze became one of the most influential French philosophers of the late twentieth century, and "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" (his joint work with Guattari) remains foundational across critical theory, film studies, and later theorizations of networks, assemblages, and affect-based politics.