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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. For disobeying God in the Old Testament, Adam was forbidden from eating from what?

2. What way does Kristeva say a person will begin to act in when he no longer has any regard for the law?

3. Kristeva cites Neusner as having studied what law?

4. Kristeva accepts the psychoanalytic theories of what psychoanalyst?

5. What does Kristeva say it is necessary for a child to do because he has to repress his primal fears that still exist in him?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Kristeva say Christianity and Judaism differ in the thoughts of impurity?

2. How does Kristeva say Christianity uses separation and division?

3. According to traditional beliefs in Christianity, how does Adam's original sin taint human freedoms?

4. What rules come with the permission to eat meat in the Old Testament?

5. How does Kristeva say incest relates to the abject?

6. What does Kristeva say are the two prevailing interpretations of the laws regarding ritual impurity in the Old Testament?

7. How does Kristeva say the Freudian model of the Oedipal triangle flawed?

8. How does Kristeva explain phobias?

9. How does social status play a role in purity customs in India?

10. How does Kristeva say the impurity phobia serves as a metaphor for society?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the way phobias relate to the abject in the book. Where does Kristeva say phobias come from? What are people really afraid of? What do phobias seem to represent, with regard to the abject?

Essay Topic 2

Explore the concept of the abject. How does Kristeva go about explaining what the abject is? Where does the abject come from? What does Kristeva mean when she says it is neither subject nor object? How does she relate her feelings about the abject to the reader? How does she use her personal experiences with these feelings to explain the abject?

Essay Topic 3

According to Kristeva's essay, what seems to be the purpose of Celine's use of grotesque and crude imagery? What is he trying to show his readers about their nature and about their identity? How does he use these grotesque images to relate man back to the abject?

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