The Dead of Lampedusa

This article presents the results of an empirical research on the Lampedusa tragedy of October 3, 2013 by comparing two opposite but related cultural processes. The first one (“dematerializing”) involves actors and social institutions seeking to dissimulate and tone down all material aspect related to the death. On the contrary, the second one (“materializing”) is based on the acknowledgement of death as a bodily occurrence. Both processes activate physical and cognitive resources on a symbolic as well as actual plane.