Deleuze's Concept of Quasi-cause. Issue 2 (May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Roffe, Jon
• Is Part Of: Deleuze studies. Volume 11:Issue 2(2017)
• Page Start: 278
• Page End: 294
• Publication Date: 2017-05
• Subjects: virtual -- intensive -- quasi-cause -- socius; Philosophy, French -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; 194
• DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0266
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-2241

Abstract

Abstract : The concept of quasi-cause is a relatively marginal one in the work of Gilles Deleuze, appearing briefly in The Logic of Sense and then Anti-Oedipus three years later. In part because of this marginality – the meagre degree to which it is integrated into the respective metaphysical system of the two works – it provides us with a useful vantage point from which to examine these systems themselves. In particular, a careful exposition of the two forms that the concept of the quasi-cause takes provides us with an aperture on the shifting role of the concepts of the virtual and the intensive in Deleuze's ongoing project. In this paper, I will argue that, through this aperture, it is possible to see the displacement of the virtual in favour of the intensive. In turn, we can characterise Anti-Oedipus as the birth of a fully actualist Deleuzian metaphysics.