“We have seen all that this valorisation of the negative signified (…) and the manner in which we are led away from the most important task, that of determining problems and realising in them our power of creation and decision. That is why conflicts, oppositions and contradictions seemed to us to be the surface effects and conscious epiphenomena, while the unconscious lived on problems and differences. History progresses not only by negation and negation of negation, but by deciding problems and affirming differences.”

“In truth, the origin of antinomies is as follows: once the nature of the problematic and the multiplicity which defines the Idea is misrecognised, once the Idea is reduced to the Same or even to the identity of a concept, the negative takes wing. Instead of the creative process of determination in the Idea, what emerges is a process of opposition of contrary predicates or limitation of primary predicates. To restore the differential in the Idea, and difference to the affirmation which flows from it, is to break this unholy bond which subordinates difference to the negative.”

Gilles Deleuze