I'm using ArcMap 10.6. I have a shapefile of geo-political borders from Natural Earth. Both the shapefile and its attribute table are in working order. But after I join a csv to the shapefile, the attribute table of the shapefile completely disappears. I can't figure out where it's gone or how to recover it. There are absolutely no columns or rows (see photo). I know the join worked, because if I click/identify an individual polygon of the shapefile, I can see its attributes (new and old) using the identify tool; I can also see the fields in the properties > fields window, but no matter what I have tried, I cannot see anything in the attribute table of the shapefile after the join. The menus in the attribute table also are not working. However, if I remove the join, the attribute table of the shapefile once again appears as normal.
I tried exporting the data after the join, as another shapefile - to see if the attribute table would be visible there - but the export progress remains at 0% after several minutes...so I think that's not going to work.
How can I make the attribute table visible again after I do the join?