Deleuze, Whitehead, Difference, Individuation

Absolute differentiation is equivalent to instantaneous disintegration. In contrast, Deleuze's concept of Difference, as the producer of discrete novel entities from an undifferentiated background, is thereby revealed as a Principle of Individuation. Because he is keen to avoid a concept of Individual that is dominated by Identity, his Difference involves three complementary but distinct differential dimensions. First, an Individual is constituted by an internal differential structure. Second that internal differential structure is an actualization of a 'virtual' differential structure. Finally, the virtual and the actual structures are differentiated. With these elaborations, Deleuze avoids the subsumption of Difference to Identity that he perhaps observes in Whitehead's Principle of Individuation, i. e. Creativity becoming defined by Concrescence, not by Discrescence, as has been previously discussed. On the other hand, Deleuze introduces a complication into the problem that Whitehead resolves, namely, the relation between the two preconditions of Difference--the undifferentiated background and the virtual structure, which for Whitehead are reconciled in God. Still, it seems likely that Deleuze would prefer a messy complication to a solution that arguably entails an ad hoc implementation of Identity.