Wolves in the Sanctuary: Ecopolitics and Forced Migration in the Literature of the Anthropocene

This chapter focuses on contemporary authors and one visual artist who engage with narratives of the wolf in the context of biodiversity, cultural diversity, and human migration. By employing an ecocritical approach I will show how fluid the biopolitically charged wolf metaphor is and how contemporary artists have tried to liberate this historically blighted image from its traditional demonisation and use for dehumanisation in order to underscore the crisis in biocultural diversity. How does contemporary literature in particular employ the metaphor of the wolf and the werewolf in the context of forced migration, the notion of abandonment, the liminal status of refugees, and their search for sanctuaries? How does this literature, in talking about biodiversity, also address cultural diversity? The need for wolf sanctuaries and hospitality for migrants and refugees connotates a shared space in which multiculturalism and ecological diversity can thrive. The chapter examines how this urgent issue is imaginatively addressed by contemporary visual artist Rainer Opolka and in literary texts by Hassan Blasim, Sarah Hall, László Krasnahorkai, and Roland Schimmelpfennig.