Can curation free the anthology? Giorgio Agamben's apparatus and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing

This article analyzes the failure of Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (2011) to fulfil the critical action it claims to achieve through curation. Deploying Agamben's concept of the apparatus, the article looks beyond the editors' claim that curation enables an avant-garde resistance to the canonizing force of the anthology form, using data visualizations to render visible Against Expression's covert enactment of the canonization it claims to avoid. In doing so, the article also questions the potential for curatorial practices to represent any real challenge to the status quo, given curation's current function as a primary apparatus of the market.