Street Art—in the City—Banksy as a Machine for the Production of Rhizomatic Difference in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze

Abstract

This study examines (street art—Banksy) not merely as an aesthetic or socio-political phenomenon, but as a living, material realization of the concept of the rhizome in the thought of Deleuze and Guattari. Moving beyond conventional representational or symbolic interpretations of graffiti and mural art, the analysis conceptualizes street art as a machine for the production of difference that operates outside the hierarchical and stabilized structures of the art world. Drawing on key concepts derived from A Thousand Plateaus, as a living, material instantiation of the central ideas of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari—namely the logic of sense, difference, and repetition—we demonstrate how street art generates lines of flight from the striated space of the city and emphasizes connectivity, multiplicity, and continuous process (deterritorialization). The street, as an open field, enables the emergence of subjects and processes that continuously reproduce innovation (difference). This rhizomatic framework reveals the capacity of street art to disrupt established norms and the dominant spatio-temporal organization of the city, thereby rewriting the urban landscape with concrete, non-linear, and contingent significations.