Spirals

Nothing has ever changed since I have been here. But I dare not infer from this that nothing ever will change. Let us try to see where these considerations lead. I have been here, ever since I began to be, my appearances elsewhere having been put in by other parties. All has proceeded, all this time, in the utmost calm, the most perfect order, apart from one or two manifestations the meaning of which escapes me. No, it is not that their meaning escapes me, my own escapes me just as much. Here all things, no, I shall not say it, being unable to. I owe … existence to no one, these faint fires are not of those that illuminate or burn. Going nowhere, coming from nowhere.

In The Unnamable and Spiral Jetty, Beckett and Smithson not only expose the presumptions and limits of the project of philosophical modernity, but also reveal the multiple temporalities of the geopolitical, problematizing (by spiralizing) the relation of the “local” to the “global.” Reading (and looking at, and hearing) Smithson and Beckett together both clarifies crucial aspects of Smithson’s project and spins back on Beckett’s as well, elucidating some of the ethical dimensions of Beckett’s work—a recoiling that is apposite, considering that over the course of his career, as Smithson’s work became more cinematic, Beckett’s output (even his work in television) arguably became more sculptural.

A special form of finding, and not finding, the center is at issue in the many spirals that play a significant role in Beckett’s writing.