Here is a way of seeing the world: it is composed not of identities that form and reform themselves, but of swarms of difference that actualize themselves into specific forms of identity. Those swarms are not outside the world; they are not transcendent creators. They are of the world, as material as the identities formed from them. And they continue to exist even within the identities they form, not as identities but as difference. From their place within identities, these swarms of difference assure that the future will be open to novelty, to new identities and new relationships among them.

We have seen this world in the thought of Spinoza, Bergson, and Nietzsche. Spinoza lays the groundwork for thinking the immanence of difference. Difference is not transcendent creation; it is immanent expression. Bergson offers the temporal scaffolding for this expression. Time is not a linear passage of discrete instantaneous units but the actualization of the virtual. Nietzsche announces difference and its eternal return. He points the way toward affirming the play of chance, the embrace of the dice throw. He does not regret the openness of the future, does not reach helplessly toward the security of what he thinks he knows.

We have seen this world in science and in language. It is the chaos within physics and biology. It is in the way language overspills itself, always doing more than it can say.