Well, that escalated quickly.
Monday, your correspondent had a story about the success and contestation of Dark Emu. I focused on two things: first, that Professor Peter Sutton and Dr Keryn Walshe, both experts in their fields, had fairly convincingly (certainly with great documented detail) argued that Bruce Pascoe had overextended evidence of various growing practices — from seeding to firestick burning — by pre-1788 Aboriginal people into systemic “incipient agriculture”.
Secondly, that Pascoe had reintroduced notions of cultural progress and worth by way of material production into ideas of Aboriginal society, blunting notions of the radical difference between “kinship-spiritual” societies and ours.
The second point stands as it is. But in the whaling on Bruce, my point — that to the non-specialist, Sutton and Walshe appear to have refuted Pascoe’s grander claims — might be lost. Pascoe may have a spear or two left in his clutch yet, and some matters may not be settled. But they have a lotta lotta evidence against. Some have described their tone as cold, although I think it’s pretty neutral. I don’t think they set out to demolish Pascoe, but to put sharp limits on what can be assumed from the accepted evidence he uses, and re-assert the absolute autonomy of pre-1788 Aboriginal society.
The second point is crucial, and that is why Pascoe, who is unquestionably a person of the left, has got pushback from those also on the left. Insisting on the radically different nature of “kinship-spiritual/hunter-gatherer” society to the sort of society that arrived on 1788 is important because, well, it’s true.
The oral record and study of thousands of such societies is univocal on this — these societies differ immensely in their content, but in their general form they are much more like each other than they are like societies with agriculture, social classes and small states, which began to emerge about 5000 BCE.
Truth is the ultimate motive for this debate but downstream from that is the politics — and the attack on Aboriginal culture from the right. And on Bruce Pascoe. Vigourous debate is one thing, but the obsessive hatred to which Pascoe has been subjected from the Quadrant spite slum and its ilk is of extraordinary volume and bile, and that needs to be said.
Pascoe, I’m, sure can take the flak from these beaten-down pissants, but it’s pretty extraordinary. Dip into Quadrant to have a look if you like. I’m pretty sure you won’t subscribe. The bitter envy such white people feel for Aboriginal culture — Anglo white culture having been destroyed by commodification — is transferred to Pascoe, a relentlessly productive writer, editor and publisher.
The right are incapable of writing about anything they love, Bolt being the rule-proving exception; sadly, his artistic forays show that (a) he really likes opera and art, and (b) he is very stupid. Their stance is one of perpetual envy. They not only hate Pascoe, they can’t quite get over their hatred of him. Pascoe’s good faith needs to be asserted against this, even as debate is joined over his conclusions.
This matters because the ideas of what Aboriginal society was and is plays a role in how it will be shaped and reshaped by a dominant settler state. But it can’t simply, wholly do it by fiat, as it might have in any time up to the 1960s.
Millions of Australians are interested in what happens to Indigenous society. The right believe that white European society is inherently superior to any Indigenous society in any condition. They want to turn the current, serious, problems of regional and remote Indigenous societies into inherent faults, which they believe run back before white arrival. Whites are just bystanders at such failing, this version alleges.
The right reject Pascoe’s conclusions but share his ideas about what sort of things should be applauded. It’s a game Aboriginal people can’t win. We know what lies at the end of it: not merely assimilation, but dissolution. Quadrant editor and former commentator (and now charities Torquemada) Gary Johns has been explicit about this in the past, arguing that small communities in WA and the NT should be abolished by the state and drawn into larger communities.
By portraying pre-1788 societies as effectively “waiting” for whites, such dissolutionists can construct pre-1788 society as radically lacking. Without a strong notion that pre-1788 society was filled with meaning, purpose and process — but of a fundamentally different character — the claim for contemporary regional/remote society as a modern/traditional hybrid, which should have specific modes of sovereignty and governance, fails also.
These separate and specific social arrangements can only be anchored in the truth of the distinctive nature of pre-1788 Aboriginal culture, and its modified continuity today. One must be attentive to unconvincing arguments, however well meant, that wear away the base for such autonomy.
Like it or not, such culture wars are politics. Indeed, they are more “politics” than the narrow economic arrangements that passed for politics in much of the century. Who owns the steel industry is a technical question compared to questions like what marriage should be, whether kinship social forms can be preserved in new ways, if borders are moral, and so on.
Those are the real biggies, emerging out of the 1960s to make the capitalism v socialism battle look like a managers’ debate (which it pretty much was). Many old hands in the liberal centre can’t understand this — or why their political parties, and audiences are shrinking to insignificance.
Politics is all around, for anyone who cares to look. It demands truth-telling, but also an identification of the real bad actors in any scenario. Which, in this case, almost certainly is the sleazy Murdoch clientelist right, and not Bruce Pascoe. Firestick burning — in politics, as in country — is liable to get out of control.
Growing up here and comprehending the natural world and our impact has been a fierce experience, the concept of our future in inevitably adopting a more symbiotic relationship with country is a sophistication one step too far for the right.
By discussing the relationship Bruce is acknowledging a different approach and in part heralding , the possibility for some adaption in a new era.
The polar opposite of our current crumbling neoconservative ramparts so heavily defended by our owners of news and information resources.
This is a really good article from Guy but there are so many interesting subplots it is really difficult to reply, but I don’t blame him for rushing.
The commodification of everything is so relevant and the massive impact on first people obviously meant adapting or perishing.
Guy’s brief comment about how the liberal centre find their audience uninterested and shrinking deserves more fleshing out, I know it is a favourite theme.
He fleshed out the brief comment in this quality read: https://arena.org.au/into-the-breach-by-guy-rundle/
Thanks for that.
As prone as is grundle to pompous & showy verbosity, 3870+ words is less “fleshed out” than morbidly obese.
And always there remains, after indulging in one of his spreads, the problem of “where’s the beef?” – like ODing on white bread & fizzy pop, stuffed & replete but zero nourishment.
But that’s just spiffy KO when one is a founding co-editor of Arena Magazine and is Associate Editor of Arena (third series).
As demonstrated by the constant schwabbings we cop here, privilege privileges.
what a pointless comment
…”evidence of the mounting degree of false consciousness created by the ideological apparatuses bolstered by a media society plugged into capitalism.”
was the only bit I could make much sense of, it wasn’t a pleasant or particularly engaging read, it required consistent questioning of what and why he was banging on about wordy stuff in that part of the sentence,.a .confounder.. into the breach was accurate for the wrong reasons, for me anyway.
Yeah, he does that a lot.
A good example of ”a little learning is a dangerous thing” which doesn’t matter here because little is a lot more than most have.
The header of the article states ‘In Defence of Bruce Pascoe’, with Rundle clearly acknowledging that Sutton and Walshe ‘(didn’t) set out to demolish Pascoe, but to put sharp limits on what can be assumed from the accepted evidence (Pascoe) uses’. So far so good.
The piece then morphs into a ‘Twitter level’ attack on the ‘beaten down pissants’ at Quadrant.
Rundle also states ‘truth is the ultimate motive for this debate but downstream from that is the politics’ – and what a superb example of that he has just offered…..
An unnecessarily wordy piece that describes political forces apparent to Guy for those believers well versed in the natty clique, not what I was hoping for , oh well.
Overall your points are valid.
Just don’t be so open minded that your brains fall out.
Grundle is, to reference an ancient movie, ‘A Suitable Case for Treatment’.
Fixed in Aspic.
It appears to me that the simple truth of the oldest culture on earth is that it was sustainable for many many millennia, and that its cultural spiritual spine is complex, subtle and very rich.
Those that take issue with this picture so well sketched by Pascoe, even with their academic footnotes, seem to see such a picture as a black arm-band view of history. This is the terra nullius view; by ignoring or denigrating the culture we have supplanted we justify ‘our’ actions.
Cultural genocide is necessary to provide a ‘moral’ justification for attempted genocide and land theft. The use of the word ‘savages’ is an historic example. Howard’s refusal to apologise is a more recent one.
I agree with Stuart Cox that:
Growing up here and comprehending the natural world and our impact has been a fierce experience, the concept of our future in inevitably adopting a more symbiotic relationship with country is a sophistication one step too far for the right.
Correct for so many wrong reasons.
Who needs Erasmus while you’re around, hey bM.
I often rely upon your always sane, lucid and usually brief contributions for their mordancy, especially in fields – such as tek & systems – of which I know less than nowt
Far better than Monday’s effort, though Rundle fails to mention dear old Crikey itself joined in this shameful attack on Pascoe’s character … as if his Aboriginality (even Rundle said he “claimed” Aboriginal descent) had a direct bearing on the arguments Pascoe makes, something Pascoe hasn’t claimed.
Is it bitter envy of Aboriginal culture that drives the right in its vitriol against Pascoe? Or is it suspicion and paranoia about a certain kind of political authority that might be gained by referencing it? The authority, that is, of ‘the left’. The reason they’ve fastened on Pascoe is not so much because of his arguments – which are not entirely new – as the fact that he has attracted a following. It’s Young Dark Emu in schools, Pascoe talks at music festivals, the consolidation of a sympathetic readership, the emergence of a sense that this formation may be able to act in relatively coordinated ways. One of the clearest statements I’ve seen has actually not been in Quadrant or News Corp, but Parnell Palme McGuinness in the Age/SMH. (https://www.theage.com.au/national/want-to-be-part-of-the-fashionable-set-don-t-join-the-freethinkers-20210618-p58270.html) It’s the same old spray against the ‘soirees of fashionable society’. They can’t allow any ‘thinking together’ to gain traction or to grow. It must be put down.
Witness Great Thumberg.
I assume that you meant Greta.
Well said. The ‘right’ we’re talking about have never had any high regard for indigenous people, their culture and their vastly long history; in fact during the nasty Windschuttle period of the culture war there was open talk, as I remember, or pretty obvious insinuation anyway, of how superior western culture was and is, and the implication that indigenous culture could, would and should die a natural death. Not something to be given much thought by the right, except that the indigenous people are useful, as you suggest, to lash “the authority of ‘the left'”. The right can at least discern that there is some political and moral authority gained by their enemy in siding with the cause of reconciliation; it needs its champions like Bolt, Windschuttle, and P. McGuinness the second to put Pascoe in his place (and maybe Adam Goodes etc. etc?), and thus give the entire perceived ‘left’ a bunch of fives.
Speaking of Parnell Palme McGuiness, I’d read the linked article before, and an equally ludicrous LNP-promoting one which Michael West described as a “slavering panegyric to Gladys Berejiklian, which kicked off with a gratuitous swipe at Jacinda Adern”. (https://www.smh.com.au/national/top-of-the-pops-gladys-berejiklian-should-beat-jacinda-ardern-in-the-2020-popularity-stakes-20201224-p56pzu.html). West also wrote:
It wasn’t just the tacky story. More the creepy incursion of political PR people into what purports to be independent journalism. Since when is it de rigueur for a media organisation to run propaganda clickbait by Liberal lobbyists who benefit from limited-tender contracts from the Liberal Government? Answer: since Fairfax (now Nine newspapers) installed Liberal editorial management.
One other comment about the big take-down of Bruce Pascoe; it seems the right detest those whom they consider ‘fake’ indigenous people as much, if not more than, those they perceive as genuine – if, indeed, they perceive any of the latter at all. Take for example Bolt’s fabled ‘fair-skinned aborigines’ defamation loss in the Federal Court, Eatock v. Bolt, 2011.
At least Guy has painted Pascoe, in this pretty good piece, as genuine. Hardaker and others haven’t.
Perfectly put.
‘Respect must be given’ ’tis said to those poor lumpen who sweated blood to ring bark and gut the landscape.
WHY?
After reading Rundle’s latest screed I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s more obsessed with the politics than with Pascoe and his myths/facts. Why all the bloody nonsense about Right and Left and what each side is supposed to believe?! And writing much more clearly and to the point would have helped persuade me to have a look at anything he writes in future.
Pascoe can write what he wants to write – I do not care what it is – but if anything is going to be taught in schools as basic history it MUST be correct.
That would be a first.
Bwahahaha! 🙂 So true. I sat next to an Indigenous girl in school when it was read from the textbook that Captain Cook “discovered Australia” – and we just looked at each other and smiled wryly. To give but one example…
Not invoking Pilate or nuttin’ but this might be relevant –
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/13446824