Between Ethics and Aesthetics: The Residual in Samuel Beckett’s Minimalism

This article offers a comparative analysis of 1960s minimalism in visual art (Robert Morris and Richard Tuttle) and music (Philip Glass and Steve Reich) on the one hand, and Samuel Beckett’s prose texts Têtes-mortes (1967) and ‘Sans’ (1969) on the other, allowing for a rethinking of Beckett’s later aesthetics. Taking into account a lesser-known study of Beckett by Adorno and tying this in with the more famous theories of Maurice Blanchot, Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida, the ethical dimension of minimalism is brought to the fore in order to shed new light on an art movement which has often been deemed to be a dead-end in art history. In particular, the article seeks to explore Beckett’s ethics of the minimal residue as a response to the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and as a consequent form of resistance to incorporation, appropriation and annihilation.