Abstract

In this article, using the example of koalas in the 2019–20 bushfires, I argue that our embodied encounters with animals are conditioned by an ethical address that can be found in and outside of language, which demands a fostering of life which must be environmental as well as physical. I posit that animals do have a face in the sense that Levinas has given us, and that our ethical responses should move beyond a narrowly defined mourning into a broader acknowledgment of the manifold ways that human economies are fuelling the sixth mass extinction of all kinds of animals, not just koalas.