‘This long and shining finger of the sea itself’: Sydney Harbour and regional cosmopolitanism in Eleanor Dark’s Waterway
Keywords:
Eleanor Dark, modernism, cultural nationalism, transnationalism, regional cosmopolitanismAbstract
This essay examines the complex negotiation of nationalism and internationalism in Eleanor Dark’s novel Waterway (1938). It suggests that Dark’s position, which involves both an interest in the broader world and a commitment to regional space, is best understood as a form of ‘regional cosmopolitanism’. Dark brings the conflicting impulses of interwar Sydney to bear upon the contested site of Sydney Harbour, registering the allure of international modernity, interrogating aspects of cultural nationalism, and pointing to the discriminatory power relations that constitute colonial modernity. The located position of Dark’s writing from within regional space makes her work particularly attuned to the uneven structures of modernity; however, her writing is also shaped by these structures, particularly in the way it contributes to settler-colonial projects. This essay raises questions as to the best framework by which to interpret Dark’s negotiation of the local, national and international, and illuminates one of the ways in which an Australian writer negotiated the contradictory impulses of the interwar period.
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