A critical analysis of urban territory as smooth spaces for feminist acts of resistance

Date

2025-8

Author

Polat, Özlem Esra

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In this research, I question how feminist acts of resistance, specifically Feminist Night Marches in Istanbul, produce alternative spatial and temporal conditions within the striated architectures of contemporary urban environments. To establish this process of inquiry, I borrow the concepts of the smooth and striated space that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari coined in their infamous work “A Thousand Plateaus” (1987) to investigate how feminist bodies disrupt, negotiate, and reclaim urban space through movement, rhythm, and collective presence. In this regard, this thesis argues that feminist night marches transform urban space not simply by occupying it, but by what Elizabeth Grosz (2001) terms “thinking from the outside”—mobilizing bodily forces that unsettle the striated logics of urban architecture and territorial control. Rather than seeing architecture and urban space as fixed forms, Grosz invites us to consider space as dynamic, shaped by the intensities and trajectories that pass through it. In the gendered dimension of urban life, I focus my research on the input that cities are not neutral socio-spatial urban terrains. Their streets and buildings have always been shaped by histories of power, control, and exclusion. Anchored in the conceptual framework of Deleuze and Guattari’s smooth and striated space, this thesis provides an interdisciplinary spatial theory—including Elizabeth Grosz’s notion of “thinking from the outside” and Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis— weaving together diverse theoretical perspectives to deepen the comprehension of feminist acts of resistance in urban space.

Subject Keywords

Urban space, Gender, Smooth & striated space, Feminist acts of resistance, Deleuze

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116169

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis