Abstract
Using a postcolonial and world-ecological framework, this article analyses the representation of water as an energy source in Thea Astley’s last and most critically acclaimed novel Drylands (1999). As environmental historians have argued, the colonial, and later capitalist, settlement of Australia, particularly the arid interior, was dependent on securing freshwater sources—a historical process that showed little regard for ecological impact or water justice until recent times. Drylands’ engagement with this history will be considered in relation to Michael Cathcart’s concept of ‘water dreaming’ (2010): the way in which water became reimagined after colonization to signify the prospect of economic growth and the consolidation of settler belonging. Drylands self-consciously incorporates predominant modes of ‘water dreaming’ into its narrative, yet resists reducing water to a passive resource. This happens on the level of both content and form: while its theme of drought-induced migration is critical of the past, present, and future social and ecological effects of the reckless extraction of freshwater, its nonlinear plot and hybrid form as a montage of short stories work to undermine the dominant anthropocentric colonial narratives that underline technocratic water cultivation.
Highlights
Water dictates Australia’s ecology, economy, and culture
I will outline how the novel’s critique of freshwater politics is expressed through representations of the sea in order to convey a sense of ecology that is mediated through neocolonial capitalist modernity
In presenting multiple instances of Australians abandoning a drought-stricken town, the novel performs the indictment of Western economic development in the outback that Benny intimates
Summary
Water dictates Australia’s ecology, economy, and culture. Though surrounded by water, Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. It registers the irony of Australia’s status as a core country, and one of the largest exporters of “virtual water” (water-intensive commodities), yet one in which peripheral environments and communities are decimated due to capitalist water practices ushered in under colonialism This happens on the level of both form and content: while its theme of drought-induced migration is critical of the past, present, and future social and ecological effects of the reckless extraction of freshwater, its hybrid form as a montage of short stories rejects the dominant anthropocentric and masculinist narrative modes that underline technocratic water cultivation. I will outline how the novel’s critique of freshwater politics is expressed through representations of the sea in order to convey a sense of ecology that is mediated through neocolonial capitalist modernity
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