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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Bataille say is the contradiction in Christians worshiping God?
(a) They keep the poor down while their worship exalts them.
(b) They hold people to scripture in private life but not in the marketplace.
(c) They elevate God's power, but claim it for themselves alone.
(d) They only go to church one day a week, but work the other six in profane employments.

2. What does homogeneity depend on?
(a) Continual revolution.
(b) A productive system.
(c) Owners keeping the workers down.
(d) Workers owning the means of production.

3. What does Bataille say democracy is based on?
(a) A weak opposition.
(b) Free elections.
(c) Free speech.
(d) Open debate.

4. What feeling does Bataille say grows in response to revolutionaries?
(a) Distrust.
(b) Disillusionment.
(c) Messianism.
(d) Faith.

5. What are the two forms of heterogeneity Bataille introduces in "Psychological Structure of Fascism"?
(a) The Marxist revolution and the capitalist marketplace.
(b) The bourgeois merchant and the Jewish banker.
(c) The sovereign and the worker.
(d) The policeman and the drunkard.

6. What does Bataille describe in "The Critique of the Foundations of the Hegelian Dialectic"?
(a) How Marx's dialectic method was critiqued.
(b) How Marx's dialectic method was misinterpreted.
(c) How Hegel's dialectic method inspired revolutions.
(d) How Marx's dialectic method was developed.

7. Under whom does fascism unite society, in Bataille's account?
(a) A leader who represents the lower common denominator of society.
(b) A leader who identifies with the state.
(c) A leader who represents the aristocratic self.
(d) A leader who identifies with the individual everyman.

8. What does the cross demand, at the end of "Sacrifices"?
(a) Embrace in struggle.
(b) Freedom from struggle.
(c) Struggle with insurmountable obstacles.
(d) Struggle with the lower self.

9. What kinds of expenditure does artistic production require?
(a) Real or symbolic expenditure.
(b) Patron or market expenditure.
(c) Public or patron expenditure.
(d) Religious or secular expenditure.

10. What does Bataille say scientists said about the dialectic?
(a) It was incompatible with science.
(b) It was a matter of faith.
(c) It was demonstrated in evolution.
(d) It was the one true science.

11. What did Bataille and Andre Masson dream about as Bataille was writing "The Labyrinth"?
(a) A dream they could not own.
(b) A dream they were setting to music.
(c) A dream they were expressing in drawings.
(d) An obscene dream they could never publish.

12. What is the significance of the image of the labyrinth in the "The Labyrinth"?
(a) It is a symbol of man's inner state.
(b) It is a metaphor for social existence.
(c) It is a metaphor for being.
(d) It represents the deadly stakes in self-knowledge.

13. What does Bataille say is analogous to the maternal breast?
(a) Death.
(b) Love.
(c) Society.
(d) Technology.

14. What does the homogeneous part of society purchase?
(a) Production.
(b) Unions.
(c) Capital.
(d) Workers.

15. What does Bataille describe as the result of individuals asking critical questions, in "Nietzschean Chronicle"?
(a) Religious persecution.
(b) The development of high society.
(c) The emergence of civilization.
(d) Decomposition of civilization.

Short Answer Questions

1. What approaches to Hegel's philosophy did Nicolai Hartmann compare?

2. What does Bataille say profit leads to, in "The Labyrinth"?

3. What was Nietzsche's life dominated by, in Bataille's account?

4. What does Baumler call revolution?

5. Who is Elisabeth Judas-Forster?

(see the answer keys)

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