Podcast: A History of Nothing (With Susan A. Crane)

This is a conversation with Susan A. Crane, author of the book “Nothing Happened: A History“. This is episode 88 of The Fire These Times.


Topics Discussed:

  • How do people think of the past?
  • What does Nothing even mean?
  • Four expressions of historical consciousness:
    1- Nothing Happened
    2- Nothing is the Way it Was
    3- Nothing has Changed
    4- Nothing is Left
  • How far away does the past have to be before being considered the past?
  • What the past says about the present
  • The examples of Germany, Chile, the USA, Spain and Lebanon
  • When histories become ruin
  • On biographies and ‘great men’
  • On ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’ in history

Resources mentioned:

Recommended Books

  • In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale
  • The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny by Susan Lepselter
  • Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman
  • A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by Alain Corbin

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Music by Tarabeat.

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