Paper short abstract:

With tools of multi-species ethnography and the research on narrative cultures, I follow wolves' traces through the stories different actors tell about Lusatia region. I reflect on how other-than-humans can be included and how they enrich our understanding of storytelling and identity politics.

Paper long abstract:

Lusatia, a region in Eastern Germany, is shaped and negotiated by narrations from internal as well as from external perspectives. While Lusatia was a central region for the GDR's power supply due to its numerous strip minings, tables have turned: Since the German reunification and due to the steady abandonment of fossil energies, renaturation of former mines shapes the landscape and narratives of Lusatia change. Industrial landscape becomes wilderness, agglomeration de-grows into wasteland. Negotiating these rivalling images, one non-human actor comes into play: The wolf. Or rather wolves; beings I want to conceptualize in a pluralistic way and who pluralize themselves in an ongoing process - in bio-physical as well as in a narrative sense. When the region Lusatia is discussed by, with and through the means of wolves, structural transformation and (a lack of) perspective(s) are at stake. Different voices need wolves to underline their stories, and to emphasize their drafts of a Lusatia of the future. Lusatia as wolfland can be an utopian or dystopian narration; and wolves can give those different perceptions the decisively positive or negative drift. Industrial site, desert, tourist attraction, recreational area - wolves are constitutive for all these narratives. Therefore, I understand them as other-than-human catalysts in the process of anticipating possible Lusatia(s). Who drafts a future with, who without wolves? What does that reveal about ongoing struggles about identity, prospects, human-world-relations and the concepts of a region, whose place within national narratives moved from center to(wards) periphery?