ABSTRACT
National history is one inflection of the discourse of nationality. Traditionally, such history seeks to construct the idiosyncracy of the nation it tautologically helps to produce by identifying empirical, material matters of special uniqueness to that nation. In Australia such a historiography can be partly traced in the lineage of Keith Hancock’s Australia (1930) to Russel Ward’s The Australian Legend (1958) and, perhaps most classically, Manning Clark’s voluminous A History of Australia (1962-). Clark’s work, in particular, is distinguished by his attempt to locate the specificity of Australia in a range of particular empirical occurrences; the discourse constructed from within by the force of its own material effectivity. White, in his book on Australian identity, Inventing Australia, has cast a shadow over this faith in the empirical. He writes:
So we will never arrive at the ‘real’ Australia. From the attempts of others to get there, we can learn much about the travellers and the journey itself, but nothing about the destination. There is none. (White, 1981: x)
The real Australia, then, is a chimera, an appearance generated by the force of, let us say, desire. The real Australia is a determining absence at the centre of national historical discourse, the Other which generates the system. In this article I will argue that within the constitution of the discourse of Australia the Northern Territory, and Darwin in particular, occupy the moment of closure of the system. The discourse of Australia constructs reality through the assumptions of positivist empiricism. Australia defines itself discursively in relation to the Northern Territory which is signalled in a variety of ways which will be discussed below as less real.
