[No.2]Contradictory is the best answer we can find

-Reflection of Simulations P13-23

Pet Sematary (1989), Mary Lambert

   "Confinement is succeeded by an apparatus which assumes a countless and endlessly diffractable, multipliable form" (18, Baudrillard) .

Baudrillard talks about so many different aspect of simulation in his book which kinda drives me crazy. I found that making connection between each point he is making is difficult. The discussion of Mummy is interesting because it is a vivid object when talks about living dead.

Based on my relatively incorrect and still confused understanding, In page 13 to 23 of Simulations,  Baudrillard talks about a few conditions of being "alive" and holding "pure" meaning in the world. As he states in the last paragraph, "this double does not mean...the imminence of death--they are already purged of death, and are even better than in life; more smiling, more authentic, in light of their model, like the faces in funeral parlors"(23, Baudrillard). There is mummy exist in there, scientist keep discovering the "truth" of mummy, but they do not know once they start digging the truth, the truth already disappear. What have left is only the empty shell of the object, as known as the "double simulacra", which seems more pure, but the origin meaning has already lost somewhere in the past.

Baudrillard concludes on this chapter that "We need a visible past, a visible continuum, a visible myth of origin to reassure us as to our ends, since ultimately we have never believed in them(19-20, Baudrillard), I connect this statement to what he brings out in the last chapter that the image of simulation  goes through a few phases:

Eventually, as we go through the procedure of recreating the truth, we conceal the non-existent truth by ourselves.

"Rameses means nothing to us: only the mummy is of inestimable worth since it is what guarantees that accumulation means something. Out entire linear and accumulative culture would collapse if we could not stockpile the past in plain view" (19, Baudrillard). People are always sicking for truth to ensure the would is under control, science are developing, and we can keep going; but based on what Baudrillard  says, there really isn’t any more things to discover. Objects can hold their meaning only if they are pure without interaction and destruction: "(science never sacrifices itself: it is always murderous), but of the simulated sacrifice of its object in order to save its reality principle" (14, Baudrillard). The more we learn, the less we can get. 

If we don't try to find the truth, the truth will be immortal. Is this mean if I don't learn anything, I actually know everything, once I start studying, I lost all my knowledge because everything I learn are just simulacra of truth? (Just kidding.

I am still confused about the meaning of this chapter, but I guess I will read fellows works to see if I can gain some different understanding.

 Pet Sematary (1989), Mary Lambert

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Vocabulary Building

paradoxical: contradictory

defy: oppoese

evanescence: disappearing

apprehension: uncertain

exert: being used

cordon: lock down

intact: complete, whole

alibi: crime scene

incarnation: typical form

brute: savage

posthumous: after dead

metallurgical: alchemy

circumscribe: limited

omnipresent: everywhere

specimen: sample

hysterical: extreme excited

ostensibly: on the surface

interrogation: trail asking

confinement: jail, restriction

asylum: shelter

efface: erase, wipe

pretext: excuse

deteriorate/putrescence: become bad

potency: potencial

Millenia: million years

Putrefaction: go to the bad

embalming: keep (body’s) well condition

reassure: better promise, be certain

exterminate: eliminate

gospel: principle

condemn: determine, state

predecessor: ancestor

hatred: hate

subterfuge: 花言巧语

indulge: accommodate

imminence: incoming danger