In intercultural exchanges specifically, the role of presence is to propitiate the generation of a sense of commonality, of culturally indifferent diversity, and of immediate evidence. A bundle of mutilated bodies in a killing field, the skinny body of a child about to die of hunger, the cry of a woman over the dead body of her young son, the sight of a man’s or woman’s naked body, an ecstatic movement or posture, the body’s movements, the smells, the instruments and the ingredients in the performance of a ritual, all these presences are endowed with a power that seems relatively autonomous in relation to the meanings that may be attributed to them.