Senses of Vibration: A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound by Shelley Trower

Since I've been studying literature at a postgraduate level, I've been reading whole droves of academic books, but I rarely ever read them the whole way though, I usually read the introduction and a chapter or two, so I haven't been including them on here. But though I haven't read all of this book either, it really caught my attention, and if I had the time and energy, I would probably read all of it. It's a really accessible and insightful book that investigates the way sound was used to represent and understand all forms of vibration in the 19th century. Using Fabric (the London club) in the 1990s and their legendary speaker system as a starting point, Trower discusses how sound is not only heard but also seen and felt, and traces this idea through 19th century theories and fiction. Part of her argument (and the one I was most interested in) is that thinking about sound  as vibration dissolves boundaries between internal and external, between subject and object, and destabilises both identity and ontology in general. The discovery of vibrations and frequencies in the 19th century gave scientific proof of phenomena beyond the range of ordinary senses, and became entwined with ideas of spiritualism, mediums, ghosts, etc. Trower shows how the whole world was conceived of as simply different frequencies, for example, light and sound were thought to be the same essential thing, just at different frequencies, leading to ontological uncertainty and the possibility of one thing becoming something else. I was reading this book for the possibilities this could have for studying the Gothic, but it's a great and exceptionally well-written and organised book in general. Trower perfectly strikes the balance of explaining just enough but not too much, and combining that with original ideas that are presented clearly and integrated with previous theories. She actually works at the university where I did my undergraduate degree, but I didn't have any classes with her, and was too shy to go bother her, which I now regret.