Deleuze, Benjamin and the Deterritorialisation of Film Subjectivity

Abstract

In this article I elaborate upon a virtually-unobserved point of similarly between the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Walter Benjamin – namely, their common cause on the revolutionary political significance of cinema as capable of scrambling conventional modes of experience. I argue that both philosophers view cinema as capable of soliciting a uniquely embodied and collective form of engagement, thus making possible a revolutionary disruption of conventional behaviour. This point of similarity, I argue, ought to figure more centrally to a comparison of the two philosophers’ views than their more superficial differences of opinion about which forms of cinema are capable of soliciting such subjective deterritorialisations. I subsequently identify a more substantial point of disagreement between the two thinkers in their different views regarding the temporality of these subjective modes: for Deleuze, cinematic subjectivity will point towards an always-displaced future; whereas for Benjamin, cinema makes possible a revolutionary rectification of the past.