Dr. Noa Levin | Associated Researcher
Home Institution
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Università della Svizzera italiana
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Disciplines
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Philosophy
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Architecture
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Biography
Noa Levin is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy and theory of architecture and the environment at the Università della Svizzera italiana, and an associated researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch. Her research interests include the politics of climate change, philosophy and history of science and environmental media theory. She holds a PhD from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London, an MPhil in European Culture and Literature from the University of Cambridge, and a BFA in philosophy and film from Tel Aviv University.
Title of thesis
Living Mirrors of the Universe: Expression and Perspectivism in Benjamin and Deleuze after LeibnizInstitution of thesis
Supervisor
Organisation of Events
7/2019 ‘Übersetzungen von Gewalt’ workshop on Walter Benjamins ‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’, supported by Centre Marc Bloch and ZfL, Berlin.
6/2017 ‘Benjamin and Leibniz: On Expression’ workshop, supported by Goldsmiths University of London, The London Graduate School, and CRMEP at Kingston University.
Catastrophe and Technology: Theorizing the Climate Crisis with Benjamin and Arendt
This project focuses on Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt’s theories of technological catastrophes. Both authors view modernity as an age of crisis, and warn of the impending violent consequences of modern technological warfare. Yet their different standpoints in history set their perspectives and theories apart. The project suggests that the two authors’ texts are uniquely suited to illuminate the role of humans in developing the technologies that brought about the current climate crisis. The project’s scientific objectives are threefold: first, to critically compare Benjamin and Arendt’s theories of technological catastrophes and interrogate the role of their respective theories within the larger tradition of crisis theory; second, to show how Benjamin and Arendt’s theories of technological catastrophes contain important reflections on the destruction of nature by humans that have hitherto remained underexplored, thereby shedding important light on the ways in which Benjamin and Arendt’s theories may contribute to contemporary environmental theory; while the third objective is to intervene in the field of climate justice that addresses the inequitable effects of anthropogenic climate change on different communities and populations. Arendt and Benjamin’s theories view justice in the present as inseparable from historical remembrance [Eingedenken] and reckoning with the past. At the same time, they put forward future-oriented concepts of community and action. This double perspective makes their theories uniquely suitable for engaging with the climate justice debate. The research will thus contribute to Benjamin and Arendt scholarship, as well as the growing fields of climate justice and environmental humanities more generally.
Benjamin, Deleuze and the Baroque The Early Modern Origins of Media Theory
February 06, 2025Noa Levin
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 9781350414211
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 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. Using a hermeneutic comparative approach, this book argues that the juxtaposition of Benjamin's reception of Leibniz with Deleuze's highlights the extent to which both authors' theories of image and media were informed by Leibniz's concepts of expression and perspectivism, themselves inspired by ground-breaking evolutions in optics and perspective. Providing close readings of Deleuze's The Fold and Benjamin's Origin of the German Trauerspiel, 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.
Table of Contents
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