Forces of unworking in Virginia Woolf’s “Time Passes”

Abstract

The middle part of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, “Time Passes”, presents a seemingly post-human setting in which destruction reigns. Read today, this scenario immediately evokes imaginations of the Anthropocene while resisting teleological notions of an end-time. Rather, “Time Passes” is pervaded by forces of unworking: agency slips into passivity, whatever is done becomes undone. A holiday house abandoned by human beings decays to “rack and ruin” until a group of cleaners attempts to reverse nature’s work. Both the natural forces taking over and the cleaners engage in processes that are simultaneously destructive and productive. An analogous dynamic can be observed in Woolf’s writing and editing practices: her laborious revisions mainly consist in deleting. As Woolf continually erases large parts of her writing, composition and decomposition are interwoven.