The philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst and political activist Felix Guattari have been recognized as among the most important intellectual figures of their generation. This is the first book-length study of their works in English, one that provides an overview of their thought and of its bearing on the central issues of contemporary literary criticism and theory.
From Deleuze's "philosophy of difference" to Deleuze and Guattari's "philosophy of schizoanalytic desire," this study traces the ideas of the two writers across a wide range of disciplines--from psychoanalysis and Marxist politics to semiotics, aesthetics and linguistics. What emerges, is an essentially Nietzschean philosophy of becoming that complements and challenges the work of such French theorists as Derrida, Foucault and Lacan in revealing and surprising ways.

Part One: Deleuze Before Guattari 1. Deleuze's Nietzsche: Thought, Will to Power and the Eternal Return. 2. Two Exemplary Readings: Proust and Sacher-Masoch 3. The Grand Synthesis: Difference and Repetition and the Logic of Meaning. Part Two: Two Exemplary Readings: Proust and Sacher-Masoch 4. Anti-Oedipus: Nietzschean Desiring - Production and the History of Representation. 5. One Exemplary Reading: Kafka's Rhizomic Writing Machine. 6. The Grand Proliferation: Regimes of Signs and Abstract Machines in Thousand Plateaus.