On Deleuze's Conception of Quasi-Cause

Abstract

The paper first situates the conception of quasi-cause within Deleuze's opus, especially concernig Deleuze's reading of Hume and Kant. It then proceeds to the role of quasi-cause in The Logic of Sense and links it with Lacan's differentiation between Cause and law. For Deleuze, the quasi-cause has its role in double causality, it is also something non-reducible on two heterogeneous multiplicties, it splits them from within in an unpredictable and incalculable way. There are certain parallels with Freud's notion of the unconscious here, especially with the dream-work, slips of the tongue, and jokes. However, Deleuze's sudden reversal and critique of psychoanalysis in Anti-Œdipe has to pay a price: it has to generalize the role once played by quasi-cause, link the quasi-cause itself with the capital, domination, and the state aparatus, and assign its role to chaos and becoming, all that in its conviction that this is the true nature of Lacan's objet petit a.