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