After extrapolating on the meaning of the scientific saving of the deteriorating Rameses II, which symbolizes a need to believe that power and accumulation can lead to permanence, Baudrillard makes a comparison to contact between Native Americans and
After extrapolating on the meaning of the scientific saving of the deteriorating Rameses II, which symbolizes a need to believe that power and accumulation can lead to permanence, Baudrillard makes a comparison to contact between Native Americans and Europeans:
We are fascinated by Rameses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians: those (human?) beings who had never known the word of Christ. Thus, at the beginning of colonisation, there was a moment of stupor and amazement before the very possibility of escaping the universal law of the Gospel. There were two possible responses: either to admit this law was not universal, or to exterminate the Indians so as to remove the evidence. In general, it was enough to convert them, or even simply to discover them, to ensure their slow extermination.
-Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of Simulacra