“Soot and Drops of Water”: Particulate Atmospherics and Redundancy in The Secret Agent
“Soot and Drops of Water”: Particulate Atmospherics and Redundancy in The Secret Agent

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the saturation of redundant particulates (such as fog, soot, dust and mist) and redundant sign systems in the atmospherics of The Secret Agent, while taking into account late Victorian responses to London’s air pollution. Through applying the information theory concepts of redundancy and information carrying capacity, it extends J. Hillis Miller’s analysis of repetition in Conrad’s work and thereby examines how the text’s minimal redundancy of specific words serves to encode higher levels of significance. The paper demonstrates that The Secret Agent represents the particulate atmosphere of London as a media system, in that its patterned use of minimal redundancy serves to trace the stabilization of collective conditions of immersion in air and sign systems.

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