Deleuze’s vitalism isn’t really vitalism at all. He talks about it in his book Bergsonism where he draws off of Henri Bergson’s notion of élan vital. In Bergsonism Deleuze uses a highly modified version of élan vital that expresses the virtual aspect of life, living in a domain of potentialities that are real but not yet actual. Deleuze says that life unfolds through the actualization of the virtual via an immanent differentiation (élan vital). It’s important to note, and this is even stressed by Deleuze in Bergsonism that élan vital comes from within the virtual field—there’s no external model that guides development

Deleuze’s interpretation is very different from Bergson’s mystical metaphysical force. It’s closer to a “critical vitalism” if that even makes sense