La piega di Deleuze tra Leibniz e il barocco

The subject of my thesis is the concept of “fold” in the work of Gilles Deleuze, as it emerges in the late 80’s. My purpose is to show that the concept of fold can summarise the entirety of Deleuze’s philosophical project. As a matter of fact, its formulation allows to address all of the most important questions of his thought, and to adopt a different approach on the discussion and the solution of some philosophical problems, such as the theme of the subject and Deleuze’s conception of philosophy as a “creation of concepts”. By doing that, I try to follow and underline the several implicit references and the hidden theoretical pattern which compose the text of The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque (1988). My work is composed of five chapters. The first one has an introductive character and consists of a reflexion on Deleuze’s philosophical reading method, which we define as “anamorphic”. The second chapter focuses on the presence of Leibniz in Difference and repetition (1968) and on the relevance of his thought in the creation of Deleuzes’ philosophical terminology. The third one is titled “A thousand folds”, paraphrasing the name of another work of Deleuze and Guattari. There I try to reconstruct the several theoretical lines that compose the concept of fold; furthermore, I try to underline the philosophical multiplicity of this concept. The fourth chapter focuses on the Baroque, which plays a fundamental role in Deleuze’s argumentations. Here I retrace his ideas about infinity and folding during the Baroque era. Then, I try to confront his theory with Walter Benjamin and Jacques Lacan’s lectures of Baroque. The last chapter deals with the concept of neobaroque and with its many manifestations.