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Deconstruction, Radical Secrecy, and The Secret Agent
- MFS Modern Fiction Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 54, Number 2, Summer 2008
- pp. 189-208
- 10.1353/mfs.0.0012
- Article
- Additional Information
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Relating the exploration of secrecy in Conrad’s The Secret Agent to Derrida’s engagement with secrecy reveals a striking proximity: Derrida and Conrad both evoke what might be called a secret without secret, a depthless secret beyond the secret, and thereby displace the secret with content. It also reveals a striking divergence. Not sharing Derrida’s passion for the secret without secret, Conrad – at least in this text – does not bear witness to what Derrida describes as “democracy to come,” nor exemplify the attempt to loosen “the sway of the Author” that Barthes affirms.