Introduction to When the Forest Burns

This essay originally appeared in French as the Introduction to Joëlle Zask’s Quand la forêt brûle. Penser la nouvelle catastrophe écologique (Premier Parallèle, 2019). The book received France Culture’s 2020 Petrarch Essay Prize, which is awarded each year to a work that sheds light on contemporary democratic issues. When the Forest Burns examines the recent phenomenon of very large wildfires or megafires and human beings’ relationship to them. Due to climate change, the size of these wildfires are on a different scale and unprecedented, they are no longer able to be controlled or contained by human beings, and they are becoming more common and increasing in size. Zask, a specialist in democratic theory, John Dewey, and aesthetics, has recently written on ecology and environmental philosophy. Zask teaches in the Philosophy Department at the University of Aix-Marseille and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France

Democracy · Human ecology · Phenomenon · Scale (ratio) · Work (physics) · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Humanities and Social Sciences