I morti degli altri

Why do we not feel the same empathy for the dead who, in some way, ‘do not belong to us’? Why, for example, did we march in the streets for the victims of the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ attack, yet show indifference towards those killed in the Boko Haram attack in Nigeria during the same period? The answer therefore inevitably goes beyond the issue of death: regardless of nationality, it is our neighbour who has vanished from the horizon of our most intimate concerns. We are witnessing and experiencing a gradual estrangement that contemporary individuals are displaying towards one another. This distancing is not merely physical; what has vanished is the sense of closeness, understood in an emotional, affective and communicative sense.