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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section I (1927-1930).

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When did Bataille and his mother abandon his father?
(a) When the Germans arrived in 1915.
(b) When the father went insane.
(c) When the father was imprisoned.
(d) When the mother took a job in Paris.

2. What does Bataille feel about the rats in "[Dream]"?
(a) The must be cleared out.
(b) They must be fed to snakes.
(c) They must be killed.
(d) They must be cleaned.

3. How does dialectic operate in "Notion of Expenditure"?
(a) It prevents revolution.
(b) It animates class struggle.
(c) It results from revolution.
(d) It pacifies the proletariat.

4. What does the other self-mutilator (besides Van Gogh) do in "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh"?
(a) Put out his eye.
(b) Cut off his hand.
(c) Bite off his finger.
(d) Drink his own blood.

5. What does Bataille say was the driving force beneath his heterodox theory?
(a) Obsession with priests.
(b) Oedipal terror.
(c) Homoerotic terror.
(d) Obsession with excrement.

Short Answer Questions

1. What principles does Bataille say men associate with the feet in "The Big Toe"?

2. What did Bataille describe in "The Lugubrious Game"?

3. Why did Bataille leave his job in 1942?

4. What does Bataille claim the world is in "The Solar Anus"?

5. How does "The Language of Flowers" end?

(see the answer key)

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