Podcasts about postwar france a critical history

Historically, how were narratives used around race, species, and the beliefs of Western civilization? What have been the contemporary implications for those earlier societal beliefs?Stefanos Geroulanos is the director of the Remarque Institute, a professor of history at New York University, and the author of several books. His latest book is called The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins. Greg and Stefanos discuss the complexities of defining human nature and the role of prehistory in understanding humanity's origins. Stefanos explores the ongoing debates about human progress, the impact of scientific discoveries like new fossils, and the culturally loaded interpretations of those findings. They also discuss how perspectives on indigenous populations and humanity's past are shaped by evolving scientific interpretations and narrative constructions, highlighting the intersection of science and politics in the research of human origins.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Show Links:Recommended Resources:TacitusCharles DarwinJean-Jacques RousseauThomas HobbesNapoleon ChagnonThe Dawn of EverythingJane GoodallMax MüllerMaurice OlenderRaymond DartNeanderthalThe Clan of the Cave BearGustav Victor Rudolf BornMemento moriOzymandiasAdam SmithGuest Profile:Stefanos-Geroulanos.comFaculty Profile at NYUHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human OriginsTransparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the PresentThe Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a ConceptAn Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French ThoughtThe Problem of the FetishThe Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great WarStaging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual HistoryThe Routledge Handbook of the History and Sociology of IdeasPower and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of HistoryWritings on MedicineKnowledge of LifeSelected Writings: On Self-Organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and JudaismEpisode Quotes:Understanding who we are as humans is key to recognizing our differences47:37: If we can begin to admit that we are people who are culturally fundamentally, economically fundamentally different—our lemons come from half a world away, the meat that we consume from another half a world away, and so on. If we come around to understanding that our family structures, our relationships, our religious questions are structured in a different form, that our world is technologically bound, and that ultimately, one way or another, we have biological connections, but even our microbiomes must be fundamentally different from what ancient microbiomes were, then we will not end up having this need to say, "Here's where it's all begun."Recognizing fundamental problems in our story opens paths beyond human origins research54:49: Recognizing that there have been fundamental problems with a story is one path to recognizing that some of the things we believe in, and some of the hopes we want set, are not necessarily bound by that story entirely, nor were they ever necessarily or entirely bound by that story. I don't think that moral arguments would have ever utterly depended on human origins research.How human origins research helped overcome traditional views02:53: Human origins became really key at several stages, and at each of those stages, something absolutely current or something truly urgent was in play. Some of these moments had to do with overcoming traditional religious answers. Others had to do with an overcoming of ideas of human nature, so that certain kinds of stability of human nature and so on. Let's not pretend that they simply disappeared, but they did become secondary. And so human origins research came to fill that void. And in some respects, that's a real advance. And in some respects, that's a problem.Two stories that helped convince people about evolution44:40: I kept thinking, in some way, whether these stories of prehistory helped convince people about evolution. And I really thought that there were two of them that did. One was the bit that we were saying before about the thin veneer—that people came to use the expression so much and to believe there is a continuity between our antiquity and now. Not simply between another, meaning an indigenous person somewhere, but that person was a reflection of who we were. And that helped create the broader belief in human continuity. But the other one was this sense about a renaissance, that people would have to somehow come to this astonishing realization that their body is made of hundreds of thousands, millions of years, which is a story that they couldn't think of without these ruins within. 

What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (Stanford University Press, 2017). A rich and complex history of France in the decades after 1945, the book is as intellectually packed as it is methodologically adventurous. Organized roughly chronologically from the end of the war to the 1980s, the book follows numerous objects, themes, and paths, coming together as a web of thinkers, metaphors, and values that referred and responded to transparency in distinctive ways in the French context. In France as nowhere else, transparency was a particular type of problem, a notion regarded with deep skepticism, suspicion even, for much of the postwar period. An intellectual history that considers the work of anthropology, political and economic theory, scientific, literary and cinematic texts, Transparency chases the concept well beyond the kinds of philosophical discourses that so often dominate the history of ideas. Divided into five sections, the book begins with the history of the concept of transparency and its uses in the immediate postwar years. It continues with a discussion of state, society, and utopia across a range of sites and figures, from the black market to gangsters, to maladapted adolescents. The third part of the book moves from the 1950s to the early 1960s, exploring norms, structuralism, self and other, face and mask. Part four turns to the question of radicalization and modernity and moves toward May ’68. The final part of the book tracks questions about the agent of history from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1980s. A wild and formidable book that overwhelms in a good way, Transparency is a challenging and impressive project. Speaking with Stef was a pleasure and I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. *The music that opens and closes the podcast is an instrumental version of “Creatures,” a song written and performed by Vancouver artist/musician Casey Wei (“hazy”). To hear more, please visit https://agonyklub.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (Stanford University Press, 2017). A rich and complex history of France in the decades after 1945, the book is as intellectually packed as it is methodologically adventurous. Organized roughly chronologically from the end of the war to the 1980s, the book follows numerous objects, themes, and paths, coming together as a web of thinkers, metaphors, and values that referred and responded to transparency in distinctive ways in the French context. In France as nowhere else, transparency was a particular type of problem, a notion regarded with deep skepticism, suspicion even, for much of the postwar period. An intellectual history that considers the work of anthropology, political and economic theory, scientific, literary and cinematic texts, Transparency chases the concept well beyond the kinds of philosophical discourses that so often dominate the history of ideas. Divided into five sections, the book begins with the history of the concept of transparency and its uses in the immediate postwar years. It continues with a discussion of state, society, and utopia across a range of sites and figures, from the black market to gangsters, to maladapted adolescents. The third part of the book moves from the 1950s to the early 1960s, exploring norms, structuralism, self and other, face and mask. Part four turns to the question of radicalization and modernity and moves toward May ’68. The final part of the book tracks questions about the agent of history from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1980s. A wild and formidable book that overwhelms in a good way, Transparency is a challenging and impressive project. Speaking with Stef was a pleasure and I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. *The music that opens and closes the podcast is an instrumental version of “Creatures,” a song written and performed by Vancouver artist/musician Casey Wei (“hazy”). To hear more, please visit https://agonyklub.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (Stanford University Press, 2017). A rich and complex history of France in the decades after 1945, the book is as intellectually packed as it is methodologically adventurous. Organized roughly chronologically from the end of the war to the 1980s, the book follows numerous objects, themes, and paths, coming together as a web of thinkers, metaphors, and values that referred and responded to transparency in distinctive ways in the French context. In France as nowhere else, transparency was a particular type of problem, a notion regarded with deep skepticism, suspicion even, for much of the postwar period. An intellectual history that considers the work of anthropology, political and economic theory, scientific, literary and cinematic texts, Transparency chases the concept well beyond the kinds of philosophical discourses that so often dominate the history of ideas. Divided into five sections, the book begins with the history of the concept of transparency and its uses in the immediate postwar years. It continues with a discussion of state, society, and utopia across a range of sites and figures, from the black market to gangsters, to maladapted adolescents. The third part of the book moves from the 1950s to the early 1960s, exploring norms, structuralism, self and other, face and mask. Part four turns to the question of radicalization and modernity and moves toward May ’68. The final part of the book tracks questions about the agent of history from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1980s. A wild and formidable book that overwhelms in a good way, Transparency is a challenging and impressive project. Speaking with Stef was a pleasure and I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. *The music that opens and closes the podcast is an instrumental version of “Creatures,” a song written and performed by Vancouver artist/musician Casey Wei (“hazy”). To hear more, please visit https://agonyklub.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (Stanford University Press, 2017). A rich and complex history of France in the decades after 1945, the book is as intellectually packed as it is methodologically adventurous. Organized roughly chronologically from the end of the war to the 1980s, the book follows numerous objects, themes, and paths, coming together as a web of thinkers, metaphors, and values that referred and responded to transparency in distinctive ways in the French context. In France as nowhere else, transparency was a particular type of problem, a notion regarded with deep skepticism, suspicion even, for much of the postwar period. An intellectual history that considers the work of anthropology, political and economic theory, scientific, literary and cinematic texts, Transparency chases the concept well beyond the kinds of philosophical discourses that so often dominate the history of ideas. Divided into five sections, the book begins with the history of the concept of transparency and its uses in the immediate postwar years. It continues with a discussion of state, society, and utopia across a range of sites and figures, from the black market to gangsters, to maladapted adolescents. The third part of the book moves from the 1950s to the early 1960s, exploring norms, structuralism, self and other, face and mask. Part four turns to the question of radicalization and modernity and moves toward May ’68. The final part of the book tracks questions about the agent of history from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1980s. A wild and formidable book that overwhelms in a good way, Transparency is a challenging and impressive project. Speaking with Stef was a pleasure and I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. *The music that opens and closes the podcast is an instrumental version of “Creatures,” a song written and performed by Vancouver artist/musician Casey Wei (“hazy”). To hear more, please visit https://agonyklub.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (Stanford University Press, 2017). A rich and complex history of France in the decades after 1945, the book is as intellectually packed as it is methodologically adventurous. Organized roughly chronologically from the end of the war to the 1980s, the book follows numerous objects, themes, and paths, coming together as a web of thinkers, metaphors, and values that referred and responded to transparency in distinctive ways in the French context. In France as nowhere else, transparency was a particular type of problem, a notion regarded with deep skepticism, suspicion even, for much of the postwar period. An intellectual history that considers the work of anthropology, political and economic theory, scientific, literary and cinematic texts, Transparency chases the concept well beyond the kinds of philosophical discourses that so often dominate the history of ideas. Divided into five sections, the book begins with the history of the concept of transparency and its uses in the immediate postwar years. It continues with a discussion of state, society, and utopia across a range of sites and figures, from the black market to gangsters, to maladapted adolescents. The third part of the book moves from the 1950s to the early 1960s, exploring norms, structuralism, self and other, face and mask. Part four turns to the question of radicalization and modernity and moves toward May ’68. The final part of the book tracks questions about the agent of history from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1980s. A wild and formidable book that overwhelms in a good way, Transparency is a challenging and impressive project. Speaking with Stef was a pleasure and I hope listeners will enjoy our conversation! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her current research focuses on the representation of nuclear weapons and testing in France and its empire since 1945. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send an email to: panchasi@sfu.ca. *The music that opens and closes the podcast is an instrumental version of “Creatures,” a song written and performed by Vancouver artist/musician Casey Wei (“hazy”). To hear more, please visit https://agonyklub.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s podcast, our Editor Sarah Dunstan speaks with Professor Stefanos Geroulanos about his latest book Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (Stanford University Press, 2017).