Bruce Pascoe always fuelled the narrative that the academic establishment would seek to quash his renegade scholarship, which is exactly what happened.
Bruce Pascoe called his book Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of Agriculture. It might as well have been called “Experts? Whadda they know?”
The idea of Pascoe v the academic establishment has become the driving narrative of Dark Emu. It was a matter of time before the empire of knowledge came down on the book’s apparent problems with scholarship, which is exactly what has happened with the publication of Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, a point-by-point critique by anthropologist Professor Peter Sutton and archaeologist Dr Keryn Walshe.
The renegade
Pascoe’s narrative of himself as the renegade who the establishment must shut down is one he pushes in Dark Emu and elsewhere.
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