Disruptive Knowledge Structures between Ecology and Economy: The Arctic as Contact Scene and Global Common in Wolf Harlander's Ecothriller "Schmelzpunkt" (2022)

Abstract

This article analyses the recently published eco-thriller Schmelzpunkt (2022) by Wolf Harlander with regard to the fictional depiction of disturbing encounters in the Arctic region. Schmelzpunkt focuses on environmental disasters, species extinction, glacier melt, economic and political struggles between major global powers such as China, Russia and the USA, but also Germany, calling into question the image of the Arctic as a place of refuge far removed from civilisation. The trigger is an unusual fish kill, the causes of which can only be uncovered through the interaction between indigenous knowledge and modern biology and the collaboration of socially heterogeneous groups after numerous mysterious attempts to cover it up. An ecological catastrophe occurs and an even greater one is only just prevented.

On the one hand, the study focuses on situations of (scientific) communication within the framework of so-called “Contact Scenes” (Koch/Nitzke 2022), in which different social power systems meet and which at the same time create a framework in which the exchange and production of knowledge, as well as disruptive disturbances of social systems of order, can be analysed. On the other hand, the conditions of the contact scenes are linked to the question of the commons, i.e. the distribution of resources and their rights of use, which overlays the conflict of the power systems depicted in the eco-thriller. Based on Garrett Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons (1968) and more recent positions of Elinor Ostrom ([2009] 2022) and Silke Helfrich (2012, 2021 with Johannes Euler), which emphasise the binding nature of resource use in the form of social practices (commoning), the literary function of these approaches in the eco-thriller will be examined. Overall, it will be shown that literature can make current complex crisis situations accessible and in what way it can contribute to overcoming them.