ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of living as a process of actualization in which immanent potentialities are borne out in creative ways. The unique set of elements and their emergence into actuality are what the individual is, for Deleuze, and that process of actualization from the field of immanence is what living is. Living—as an ongoing process and experience—is exemplified by Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return. For Deleuze, the eternal return does not mean that history is bound to repeat itself or that the circumstances experienced at present will be experienced again in the future. Death “happens because the act of living is necessarily open to the outside, on new becomings and metamorphoses.” Thus, death allows for a glimpse at the nature of the virtual as a vital force through which everything is becoming. The process of living is the process of becoming, even (or especially) if that means becoming dead at a given moment.
