# data[].attributes.body
Welcome to Nothing Happened Here: Finding the Unfound at Moreland Farm. This project tentatively traces the threads, known and unknown, of the place that is Moreland Farm, culminating with a call to investigate further three new lines of inquiry.

The story unfolds via various media to create a sort of non-fiction prose poem that can be experienced a number of ways, outlined in the next text box.

In any case, this project is first and foremost a vehicle of self-expression and self-discovery, starting with the personal (Ep. 1), then moving through the political (Ep. 2), the present (Ep. 3), and finally, ending with the possible (Ep. 4). The project title and column headings are taken from Susan A. Crane's book, Nothing Happened: A History, which can be accessed in the final column (Ep. 5), along with additional resources and references.

# data[].attributes.body
We know the things undergirding Nothingness. To know the thingness of a place, its Nothingness must surface and speak the unknowable into knowableness, into know-a-thingness. For your consideration, here are three lines of inquiry to be explored, with Nothing left unturned.

# data[].attributes.body
Before you are assorted items connecting the place of Moreland Farm to a Morepersonal Nothingness, that which may have once been something before its relegation to the Nothingness of the past. Maybe these are not things (No, things) but rather brief glimpses into what may or may not have gone on there. Births, deaths, belongings, betrayals, bridges between the being and bereaving of Moreland. Not one of these things may be captured by a caption or recreated via retrospection, for Nothing is and isn't simply the sum of its constituent emptinesses. Nothingness is something steadfastly stronger than the sum of its selves.

# data[].attributes.body
So let us now claim that Nothing is and isn’t the way it was, Moreland or less. Despite its persistent presence (pre-sense), it seems that Nothing was once a signature signed solely and soullessly by the authority of the nameless though not unnamed arbiters of history. Nothingness can now be ascertained with an unprecedented quickness, though this acceleration also applies to its associated activity; and in activity (inactivity), Nothing is now disputed and debated like Nothing before. For Nothing has changed. It really, truly has.

# data[].attributes.body
The pages before you now give a curated glimpse at the “official” historical record on Moreland. I stumbled upon this document almost randomly, as a happy accidental consequence of seemingly stalled research. In the Nothingness of stalling, or as Docot might say - through the “negative productions of conducting fieldwork in the hometown” - my aimless searching led me to a source of insight not previously on my radar. This column represents the “official” record. It reveals the nature of "studying history" as being closely tied to various projects of cultural hegemony and violence - nationalism (see Anderson), white supremacy (see Zuberi), racial capitalism (see Harris), epistemological hegemony (see Foucault); essentially, uncritical worship of the Eurocentric state archive. This is how the "story" has been "studied”, and through its meta-examination may we ascertain what has been considered “something” and what has been considered “Nothing”.

# data[].attributes.headline
Line of Inquiry #1. Black Resistance and Self-Determination; John White’s Terrorism; and the Path to Reparations, Reconciliation, and White(‘s) Accountability

# data[].attributes.subject
Line of Inquiry #1. Black Resistance and Self-Determination; John White’s Terrorism; and the Path to Reparations, Reconciliation, and White(‘s) Accountability

# data[].attributes.body
First, we must know the history of Black self-determination and liberation within and around the place that is Moreland, though it is no Moreland than the sky or the ocean. What is known must be unknown, what’s unknown known, what’s gotten begotten, what's forgotten got.

# data[].attributes.headline
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. Verso.

# data[].attributes.subject
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. Verso.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is a book by Benedict Anderson about the development of national feeling in different eras and throughout different geographies across the world. It introduced the term " imagined communities" as a descriptor of a social group-specifically nations-and the term has since entered standard usage in myriad political and social science fields. The book was first published in 1983 and was reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006.

The book is widely considered influential in the social sciences, with Eric G.E. Zuelow describing the book as "perhaps the most read book about nationalism." It is among the top 10 most-cited publications in the social sciences.

According to Anderson's theory of imagined communities, the main historical causes of nationalism include:

the increasing importance of mass vernacular literacy,

the movement to abolish the ideas of rule by divine right and hereditary monarchy ("the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm....[N]ations dream of being free...The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state...", 1991, 7);

and the emergence of Print capitalism ("the convergence of capitalism and print technology... standardization of national calendars, clocks and language was embodied in books and the publication of daily newspapers")

All of these phenomena coincided with the start of the Industrial Revolution.

According to Anderson, nations are socially constructed. For Anderson, the idea of the "nation" is relatively new and is a product of various socio-material forces. He defined a nation as "an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign". As Anderson puts it, a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion." While members of the community probably will never know each of the other members face to face, they may have similar interests or identify as part of the same nation. Members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity: for example, the nationhood felt with other members of your nation when your "imagined community" participates in a larger event such as the Olympic Games.

Nations are "limited" in that they have "finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations". They are "sovereign" since no dynastic monarchy can claim authority over them, in the modern period:

[T]he concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism [incongruence, divide] between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gauge and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.

Even though we may never see anyone in our imagined community, we still know they are there through communication means such as newspapers. He describes the act of reading a daily paper as a "mass ceremony":

"It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull. Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion." (35)

Finally, a nation is a community because,

regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

The first major critique of Anderson's theory was Partha Chatterjee, who contends that European colonialism de facto imposed limits to nationalism: "Even our imaginations must remain forever colonized" (Chatterjee, 1993: 5).

The second criticism was its masculine vision of nationalism: "the very term horizontal comradeship [...] brings with it connotations of masculine solidarity" ( Linda McDowell, 1999: 195).

Adrian Hastings criticized the modernist interpretations of Anderson and another Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm for restricting the emergence of nationalism to the modern period and the eighteenth century as ignoring the national feelings of the medieval period and the framework for national coexistence within the Bible and Christian theology.

Dean Kostantaras argued that Anderson's study of nationalism was far too broad, and the topic required a much more thorough investigation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is a book by Benedict Anderson about the development of national feeling in different eras and throughout different geographies across the world. It introduced the term " imagined communities" as a descriptor of a social group-specifically nations-and the term has since entered standard usage in myriad political and social science fields.

# data[].attributes.body
Take this journey with me. First we identify the seed of a new line of inquiry: the Moreland Farm file references a Pleasant View District file, claiming that the latter was founded by persons previously enslaved at the former by John White and family.

# data[].attributes.body
Courtesy of Frederick News Post

# data[].attributes.headline
Ayoub, J. with Crane, Susan A. (2021). Podcast: A History of Nothing. The Fire These Times Community Supported Podcast and Project.

# data[].attributes.subject
Ayoub, J. with Crane, Susan A. (2021). Podcast: A History of Nothing. The Fire These Times Community Supported Podcast and Project.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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

If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. You can follow on Twitter or Instagram @ firethesetimes too.
If you can't donate anything, you can still support this project by sharing with your friends and leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts!

Music by Tarabeat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Podcast: A History of Nothing (With Susan A. Crane)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
https://youtu.be/LYEDXeT-rSg 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 Happened2- Nothing is the Way it Was3- Nothing has Changed4-...

# data[].attributes.headline
Crane, Susan A. (2020). Nothing Happened: A History. Stanford University Press.

# data[].attributes.subject
Crane, Susan A. (2020). Nothing Happened: A History. Stanford University Press.

# data[].attributes.body
Let’s follow the thread and return to the archives in search of Pleasant View District File (F-1–139). Watch what happens as we make the query in the search bar and attempt to click on the results...

# data[].attributes.body
So even though the file wasn’t found by ordinary means, I eventually managed to locate it with a website workaround. This process exposed a flaw in the archive search engine, most likely a fluke consequence, ironically, of a recent website revamp. We can speculate on the “why” of the issue, but it won’t change the “what”, which is to say: malicious or not, the archive is neither accessible nor equitable, and if Nothing is searchable, then Nothing will be found. (I have flagged the error to the admins, and in the meantime I will be taking a deep dive into document F-1-139, found in full in episode 5).

# data[].attributes.headline
Docot, D. (2017). Negative Productions during Fieldwork in the Hometown. GeoHumanities.

# data[].attributes.subject
Docot, D. (2017). Negative Productions during Fieldwork in the Hometown. GeoHumanities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Docot - 2017 - Negative Productions during Fieldwork in the Homet

# data[].attributes.headline
Line of Inquiry #2. Unearthing Indigenous Epistemologies via Decolonized Methodologies

# data[].attributes.subject
Line of Inquiry #2. Unearthing Indigenous Epistemologies via Decolonized Methodologies

# data[].attributes.body
As we observed in the document of Episode 2, Nothing adorns the majority of the Moreland historical deed, so we should next assume untold ledger lines of genocidal seizing of the indigenous sovereign land. There is no Moreland without Lessland. There never was nor will be.

# data[].attributes.headline
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge. Pantheon Books.

# data[].attributes.subject
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge. Pantheon Books.

# data[].attributes.body
Native Land Digital is one way to start the investigation. See episode 5 for further reading.

# data[].attributes.headline
Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, Vol. 106, No. 8.

# data[].attributes.subject
Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, Vol. 106, No. 8.

# data[].attributes.body
This project is designed to be experienced as either a live presentation/performance or as an interactive exhibit on your own device. If you are interacting with this project on your own, you have a few options:

Option 1 (recommended) - For episodes 1-3, click play on the audio at the top of each column and slowly scroll through each column until its audio has ended. Note that clicking on the photos to enlarge them will stop the audio. To avoid this issue, open the audio in a separate tab by pressing play and then the "pop-out" button on the right. Then you can explore the items more closely while the audio plays in a separate tab. Episode 4 contains several audio narrations as well as a few screen recorded videos with voiceover; these are meant to be taken in one after the other, so start at the top, press play, and expand each item to full screen as desired.

Option 2 - Find the "slideshow" button on your screen. Press play. Use the arrows at the bottom of the page to navigate through the slides, one by one, engaging with the material as you wish.

Option 3 - You may simply move through the items on this page right here right now one by one, reading the text boxes (with or without listening to the audio narration) and viewing the photos, screen recordings, and documents within each column, moving from top to bottom and left to right.

# data[].attributes.headline
Maryland Historical Trust. (2003). Moreland Architectural Survey File. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.

# data[].attributes.subject
Maryland Historical Trust. (2003). Moreland Architectural Survey File. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.

# data[].attributes.headline
Line of Inquiry #3. Family Fracture and the Messiness of Memory

# data[].attributes.subject
Line of Inquiry #3. Family Fracture and the Messiness of Memory

# data[].attributes.body
And finally, what's left to wonder of Moreland’s Nothingness but the foregone Nothings of family fracture, those things known as Nothing or unknown as something? Of all the things to know of Nothing, I know one thing for sure: that Nothing is found, not one thing at all, well at Moreland Farm.

# data[].attributes.headline
Maryland Historical Trust. (2019). Pleasant View Survey District Survey File. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.

# data[].attributes.subject
Maryland Historical Trust. (2019). Pleasant View Survey District Survey File. Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.

# data[].attributes.headline
Roundtree, H. and Davidson, T. (1993). Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland.

# data[].attributes.subject
Roundtree, H. and Davidson, T. (1993). Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland.

# data[].attributes.headline
Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books Ltd.

# data[].attributes.subject
Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books Ltd.

# data[].attributes.body
Posthumously, we
inherit an image of
that which we were not.

- DVG 2004

# data[].attributes.headline
Zuberi, T. Thicker than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie. UMN Press.

# data[].attributes.subject
Zuberi, T. Thicker than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie. UMN Press.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Zuberi, who was named one of Philadelphia's 76 smartest people by Philadelphia Magazine, has written a brilliant new book, Thicker Than Blood. One of the most powerful claims of the book is that instead of being a fixed biological reality, race is instead a socially produced phenomenon. His point is to show just how vicious-especially through the use of statistics-the notion of race has been when it has been employed to protect the interest of those in power (whites), especially those who say that because race does not exist, racism is not real.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A hard-hitting investigation of the racist uses of statistics-now in paperback!

# data[].attributes.headline
Creative Commons Copyright License for this webpage:

# data[].attributes.subject
Creative Commons Copyright License for this webpage:

# data[].attributes.body
Nothing Happened Here: Finding the Unfound at Moreland Farm © 2023 by Dane Victor Galloway is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0