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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What was the purpose of the Popular Front, in Bataille's account?
(a) To oppose immigrants in France.
(b) To oppose fascism in France.
(c) To overthrow the Vichy government.
(d) To oppose Hitler.

3. What did Bataille intend to define "The Critique of the Foundations of the Hegelian Dialectic"?
(a) Dialectic aesthetics.
(b) Dialectic philosophy.
(c) Dialectic limits.
(d) Dialectic politics.

4. What results from acting in specialized areas, in Bataille's opinion in "The Labyrinth"?
(a) Man becomes a specialist.
(b) Man conquers the universe in its details.
(c) Man is impoverished.
(d) Man loses his innocence.

5. What is the significance of the obelisk in "The Obelisk"?
(a) It organizes space by looming over it.
(b) It represents captured glory.
(c) It represents the ruling party.
(d) It stands for the sovereign.

6. Which of the following is one of the directions recomposition of society can take?
(a) Technological dictatorship.
(b) Decomposing bureaucracy.
(c) Nihilism.
(d) Liberating myths.

7. What does Bataille say about the knife whose handle and blade are changed indefinitely?
(a) It is a modern knife, with replaceable parts.
(b) It is no longer the same knife.
(c) It partakes of the eternal form of knife-ness.
(d) It is a capitalist knife, with its value in its use alone.

8. What is classical utility theory inadequate to define, in Bataille's opinion?
(a) The value of tranquility.
(b) What is useful to man.
(c) The value of religious belief.
(d) What is aesthetically valuable.

9. What was Bataille summing up in his "Propositions"?
(a) His thoughts on the death of God.
(b) His thoughts on sex and perversity in modern life.
(c) His thoughts on modern culture.
(d) His thoughts on Nietzschean metaphysics.

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

11. Whom does Bataille say can never touch the reality of earth?
(a) Those who exploit the earth for profit.
(b) Those who do not understand it.
(c) Capitalists.
(d) Fascists.

12. What did fascism use Nietzsche's writing to oppose?
(a) The current political system.
(b) Sentimentalism.
(c) The view of the past being taught in German schools.
(d) The policies of Daladier.

13. How did Bataille relate to Andre Masson's drawings?
(a) He saw himself as the sick man.
(b) He saw himself as the lines and the paper themselves.
(c) He saw himself as the entire cosmos.
(d) He saw himself as the self in flight.

14. What circumstances must be in place for the science function to be served, in Bataille's account in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"?
(a) Profit must be part of the goal.
(b) Science must be the only goal.
(c) Religion must be referred to in its sense of its goals.
(d) It must serve someone's sense of power.

15. What was Nietzsche's life dominated by, in Bataille's account?
(a) Aggression toward the social world.
(b) Obsession with a lost world.
(c) Stifled affection for a woman.
(d) Puzzles in which he could see the nature of society.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bataille say poor people cannot stop rich people from doing?

2. How does bourgeois society enslave and degrade poor men, in Bataille's opinion?

3. What does Bataille describe as the result of individuals asking critical questions, in "Nietzschean Chronicle"?

4. Who is Elisabeth Judas-Forster?

5. How did fascists see Nietzsche?

(see the answer keys)

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