Victimes à tout jamais: les enfants et les femmes africaines. Humanitarisme spectacle et politique de la pitié

During recent years Anthropology has developed a critical reflection upon humanitarian action and reason with the aim to analyse the local and the global, or rather, the “glocal” as an all. Starting from the representation of the Other as a “victim on the monitor”, the author proposes to analyze two advertising campaign of Italian NGOs. The first one operates in the field of international adoption and runs campaigns in support of African witch children; the second one fights for women rights against excision. The intent is to show how these organizations build a representation of a drifted “African humanity” made of women and children. From the point of view of these NGOs, the surviving of women and children, either here or there, depends from their actions that are inspired by a moral-pedagogical ideology. The debates on Africa that are proposed in Italy by the media are directly connected with an internal politics that is in front of Alterity – migration – and of some politically “burning” subjects like family, role of women, adoption and sexual choice, civil rights etc