The other alongside: suburban mangroves and the postcolonial lean of the swampy gothic

The other alongside: suburban mangroves and the postcolonial lean of the swampy gothic

This paper will explore how the gothic folded into the suburbs by the mangroves that edge the Cooks river in Sydney troubles the colonial values expressed in the river. Named after Captain James Cook, this river was forced into the service of colonial ambitions from the early years of British settlement. Its concreted channels, reengineered entrance, and metal embankments still mark colonial values and violence across the geography of Sydney’s southern suburbs. The river’s returning mangroves now perform some of the compelling functions of the gothic within this suburban environment by asserting their otherness alongside. In a typically gothic manner, that otherness does not remain rivers-edge. It leans across and folds into the suburbs in numerous ways. Some of these ways suggest the sinister – the malevolent smell, the waves of summer mosquitoes possibly harbouring hidden viruses, the way things disappear into the dark mud. Others suggest a competing alien agency, as the mangroves insist upon their own muddy and accommodating ecological values that contrast with many of the plans of urban development and riverside recreation. The dark and twisted mangroves alongside disturb suburban slumber into anxiety, but also into sensitivity towards the dispossessed and marginalised, and towards the possibilities of more-than-human worlds and post-colonial futures.