Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) was a French philosopher born and based in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in postwar French thought. Over a career spanning from the early 1950s until his death, he wrote extensively on philosophy, literature, film, and art, developing original concepts of difference, multiplicity, and desire that helped shape poststructuralist and contemporary continental philosophy. He held the agrégation in philosophy and taught in French secondary schools and universities before becoming a prominent academic, with major works including Difference and Repetition (1968), The Logic of Sense (1969), and, with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, the two-volume Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980).

Deleuze was a prolific author of both major monographs and shorter occasional pieces; these shorter writings—articles, book reviews, prefaces, conference papers, and interviews from 1953 to 1974—are collected in Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953–1974, edited by David Lapoujade and translated by Michael Taormina, published