Forms of Loss: Dead Bodies and Other Objects

Starting from Gilroy’s reflection that it is possible – and it must become feasible – to avoid seeing “contact with cultural difference solely as a form of loss” (Gilroy, 2000), I will consider this statement in the light of the set of reference points that European cultures share, and on the ground of which incoming migrants are often petrified in a Medusa-like fashion, and represented as non-human entities, reifying societal fears. This attitude is given visible shape by the ways in which the body of the Other, especially when dead or dying, becomes an exploitable product, an object that may – both symbolically and in practice - enter the market and yield relevant profits. I would argue that, within the frame of the mechanisms of consumption, the body of the Other is often used as a tool “to reinforce social and cultural domination by certain members” (Sassatelli 2007), both in the tragic images of migration circulated through the media and in the Western narratives of migration. My work focusses on a selection of widely circulated texts, belonging to different national contexts and both in the field of written narrative and in that of visual representation, and my analysis is aimed at showing how deeply necessary is some contextualized critical analysis – literary, filmic and linguistic – as to overcome the Western tendency to make the Other into an object, consciously or unconsciously reducing the impact – and therefore the political relevance – of his/her condition as a consequence of being “at the other end of the imperial chain” (Gilroy, 2000).