Benjamin, Deleuze, and the Baroque: The Early Modern Origins of Media Theory

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 Deleuzes 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 Benjamins reception of Leibniz with Deleuzes makes manifest the extent to which both authors theories of image and media were informed by Leibnizs 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 Benjamins 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.