Benjamin, Deleuze and the Baroque

For Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze, who both authored seminal theoretical works on early cinema and photography, the history of modern media begins much earlier, in Baroque culture and science. Benjamin, Deleuze, and the Baroque argues that their media theories were informed by their respective readings of the philosophy and mathematics of G.W. Leibniz, and how the Baroque can thus be seen as the locus of modern media. By critically comparing Benjamin and Deleuze''s interpretations of the Baroque, Levin demonstrates the extent to which their theories of visual culture are intertwined with critiques of enlightenment historiography and politics. By using a hermeneutic comparative approach, the book argues that the juxtaposition of Benjamin''s reception of Leibniz with Deleuze''s makes manifest the extent to which both authors'' theories of image and media were informed by Leibniz''s concepts of expression and perspectivism, itself inspired by ground-breaking evolutions in optics and perspective taking place during his time. Providing close critical analyses of Deluze and Benjamin''s works on cinema, which remain understudied in the English language, it explores how, in their dual roles of philosopher and cultural critic, the pair may illuminate our own age of multiple crises through the Baroque.>

Préface
Interrogates the origins of Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze's modern media theory in Baroque culture and science.

Auteur

Noa Levin

Contenu

Introduction I. A Strange Encounter II. Redefining the Baroque III. Leibniz, Paradigmatic Baroque Philosopher Chapter 1: Of Monads and Mirrors: Leibniz's Monad in Deleuze and Benjamin 1.1 The Structure of Expression 1.2 Leibniz's Two Labyrinths 1.3 A Forbidden Tradition 1.4 Continuity of Knowledge and Experience Chapter 2: Infinite Tasks of Learning: The Baroque-Inspired Critical Epistemologies of Benjamin and Deleuze 2.1 Infinite Analysis 2.2 Refiguring the Idea 2.3 The Concept of Origin 2.4 Minute Perceptions 2.5 Learning as Recollection Chapter 3: Forces of History and Spectres of Return: The Baroque as Origin of Enlightenment Politics and Historicisms 3.1 Leibniz's Concepts of Force and Historical Progress 3.2 Virtual Histories and Infinite Totalities 3.3 Force and Violence in Origin of the German Trauerspiel 3.4 Apokatastasis and Eternal Return 3.5 Benjamin and Mallarmé on Chance and Probability Chapter 4: It's All about Perspective: The Body Politics of the Baroque Image 4.1 Benjamin's Monadic Montage 4.2 Leibniz's Conceptions of Image and Perspective 4.3 Perspectivism and Mannerism 4.4 Allegory and Symbol 4.4 Perception and Body Chapter 5: From the Crystal Palace to Cinematic Crystals: The Baroque Optic as Pre-cinematic Form 5.1 Between the Dialectical Image and the Crystal-Image 5.2 Deleuze and Benjamin on Montage and Montrage 5.3 The Crystal Pyramid, Leibniz's Theodicy Conclusion