This paper contributes to decolonisation theory and debates in Higher Education by thinking from the practice of diversifying subject reading lists. To illustrate the scene within which diversification efforts unfold I draw on primary research designed to explore the function of a subject canon (Urban Studies). Researched and written as an autoethnographic rhizoanalysis, I show that texts' meanings are intertextually established through hegemonic processes of canonisation, which are curricular in effect; and which draw in readers as nodes through which the assemblage proliferates. Using Karen Barad's concept of intra-activity to better articulate the materiality of this curricular assemblage and our inseparability from it, I critique the common practice of "adding more diversity" for its failure to attend to underlying logics and its edging out of more radical responses. I then discuss the decolonial openings that intra-action makes possible, focusing on its potential for producing different knowledge(s) through reading and research.