Gilles Deleuze in the context of "Difference and Repetition"

A tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character or cast of characters. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure," for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

Originating in the theatre of ancient Greece 2500 years ago, where only a fraction of the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides survive, as well as many fragments from other poets, and the later Roman tragedies of Seneca; through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Jean Racine, and Friedrich Schiller to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg; Nurul Momen's Nemesis' tragic vengeance & Samuel Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering; Heiner Müller postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. A long line of philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon, and criticised the genre.

Capitalism and Schizophrenia (French: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie) is a serial composed of two volumes, Anti-Oedipus (1972, translated in 1977) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980, translated in 1987). It was written by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, during the May 1968, a period of civil unrest in France.

Deleuze's translator Brian Massumi observes that the books differ drastically in tone, content, and composition.

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (French: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second being A Thousand Plateaus (1980).

In the book, Deleuze and Guattari developed the concepts and theories in schizoanalysis, a loose critical practice initiated from the standpoint of schizophrenia and psychosis as well as from the social progress that capitalism has spurred. They refer to psychoanalysis, economics, the creative arts, literature, anthropology and history in engagement with these concepts. Contrary to contemporary French uses of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, they outlined a "materialist psychiatry" modeled on the unconscious regarded as an aggregate of productive processes of desire, incorporating their concept of desiring-production which interrelates desiring-machines and bodies without organs, and repurpose Karl Marx's historical materialism to detail their different organizations of social production, "recording surfaces", coding, territorialization and the act of "inscription". Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas of the will to power and eternal recurrence also have roles in how Deleuze and Guattari describe schizophrenia; the book extends from much of Deleuze's prior thinking in Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense that utilized Nietzsche's ideas to explore a radical conception of becoming.

A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (French: Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. While the first volume, Anti-Oedipus (1972), was a critique of contemporary uses of psychoanalysis and Marxism, A Thousand Plateaus was developed as an experimental work of philosophy covering a far wider range of topics, serving as a "positive exercise" in what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as rhizomatic thought.

Pierre-Félix Guattari (/ɡwəˈtɑːri/ gwə-TAR-ee; French: [pjɛʁ feliks ɡwataʁi] ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy independently of Arne Næss. He has become best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Henri-Louis Bergson (/ˈbɜːrɡsən, bɛərɡ-/; French: [bɛʁksɔn]; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War, but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme.

Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality. Bergson was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930, France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur. Bergson's great popularity created a controversy in France, where his views were seen as opposing the "secular and scientific" attitude adopted by the Republic's officials.