Deleuze's philosophical project — often pursued in collaboration with Félix Guattari — rejected the dominant Continental traditions of his time (phenomenology, structuralism, Lacanian psychoanalysis) in favor of a thought centered on difference, multiplicity, and becoming. These commitments made Whitehead a natural interlocutor. Both philosophers prioritized process over substance, becoming over being, events over things.
The engagement was not uncritical. Deleuze read Whitehead through the lens of his own project, which emphasized difference and deterritorialization in ways Whitehead had not. But the engagement was