This thesis aims to interrogate the effects that the main formats of curatorial theory have had on curating as a field. The context where my research sits is curating’s shift towards non-exhibitionary, collective forms of practice and the abandonment of authorial curating in favour of a more self-effacing, less hierarchical type of practitioner. The thesis explains how curating’s main formats of reflection (the anthology, the self-reported case study and the symposium) behave; and how they do so, through their enactment and circulation, in ways that might be at odds with certain strands of curating that have avowed a desire for horizontality. Because it has been those strands of curatorial practice that have also championed the production of theory as an expanded form of curating, my research’s aim has been to demystify the assumption that these formats, curating’s rhetorical production, are innocent or less hierarchical for being non-exhibitionary—or, more broadly, for being “discursive”, to use curating’s prevalent understanding of discursive practices as those where speech acts occupy a central role. While I show that these formats are not unproblematic, it has also been my intention to explain how they might have other repercussions that are not necessarily negative. These formats, as I elaborate in the conclusions, hold the field together, transform curatorial thinking into a body of knowable objects and generate a shared consciousness among practitioners. My critique draws on Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Louis Althousser in order to operate with key concepts such as discourse, performativity and ideology, respectively, as well as on various scholars that have contributed to literary theory (Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish, Mary Louise Pratt) and performance studies (Peggy Phelan and Philip Auslander) to further nuance my understanding of the different formats I have analysed. Key practitioners whose contributions to curatorial theory I have unpacked are Paul O’Neill, Beatrice von Bismarck, Irit Rogoff and Mick Wilson, among others. The introduction sets the scene and outlines the structure of the thesis as a programme of analysis. It also includes a breakdown of the methodology, positionality, scope and limitations of the thesis. The first chapter focuses on anthologies of curatorial theory and their relationship to ideas of programming and readership. The second chapter unpacks self-reported case studies as a primary writing strategy in curatorial thinking. The third chapter traces the various places where discursivity and rhetorical production appear vis-a-vis non-representation and community instantiation in the evolution of curatorial thinking. The fourth and last chapter interrogates the role of the live audience in the production of curatorial thinking.

AHRC [2242870]