Sonic Bubble as Immune Mechanism in the Age of Electronic Media: Arthur Conan Doyle and the Phonograph

In the late nineteenth century, the new technology of sound raised public awareness about people’s constant exposure to sound, audible or inaudible to the human ear. Hence, the self has to fight immuno-wars defending itself from potential damages caused by sound, a warfare which also gives rise to the idea of “noise.” The social/cultural construction of noise and the need to ward against it in modern society echo Roberto Esposito’s idea of immunology. This study deals with short stories about the phonograph written by Arthur Conan Doyle at the turn of the twentieth century. By contextualizing these stories in the history of technology, I discuss how new sounds reformed human hearing and the practice of listening. Also, I argue that a new immune mechanism has evolved in response to the modern man’s war to protect the self. I will thus engage with Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of the listening subject and Peter Sloterdijk’s microspheric immunology in order to shape the notion of the “sonic bubble” as a new immunological strategy that does not operate via violence but tolerance.