Abstract/Summary

Why don’t we feel the same empathy for the dead who, in some way, “do not belong to us”? Why, for example, did we take to the streets for the victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, yet show indifference toward those killed in the Boko Haram attack in Nigeria during those same days? The answer, therefore, goes inevitably beyond the topic of death: beyond national origin, it is our “neighbour” who has disappeared from the horizon of our most intimate concerns. We are witnessing and experiencing a gradual distancing that contemporary individuals are showing toward one another. A distancing that is not only physical; what has disappeared is the sense of proximity—understood in an emotional, affectionate, and communicative sense.