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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where does fascism originate?
(a) Among the middle classes who want to control the proletariat.
(b) Among the rich who are threatened by an outside group.
(c) Among the workers who seize control of the means of production.
(d) Among the poor who have nothing to establish power.

2. What does Bataille say profit leads to, in "The Labyrinth"?
(a) Illumination.
(b) Salvation.
(c) Degradation.
(d) Purgatory.

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

4. 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.

5. What does Bataille say man demanded of the earth?
(a) Answers.
(b) Consolation below the earth.
(c) Necessity above the universe.
(d) Productivity on the earth.

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

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

8. What was the essay "Sacrifices" used as?
(a) A personal essay.
(b) A criticism.
(c) As a preface.
(d) A review.

9. What type of men's 'being' does Bataille compare in "The Labyrinth"?
(a) A worker and a store-keeper.
(b) An important man and a wanderer.
(c) A man and a woman.
(d) A worker and a sovereign.

10. How did fascists see Nietzsche?
(a) As a martyr.
(b) As a traitor.
(c) As a prosecutor.
(d) As a primary ancestor.

11. When does an obelisk cease to be meaningful?
(a) When the people have more important needs.
(b) When the military leader who erected it dies.
(c) As soon as the authority it symbolizes becomes conscious.
(d) When the political party that built it is voted out.

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

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

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

15. How is the question of 'what exists compared to what appears' resolved, in "Sacrifices"?
(a) By answering what is required to exist for moral value.
(b) By accepting the duality of latent and manifest action.
(c) By moving beyond questions of present and past.
(d) By unraveling the mystery of language.

Short Answer Questions

1. Under what conditions can a state be democratic, in Bataille's opinion?

2. From what does Bataille say Alfred Baumler distilled a doctrine of the people's will to power?

3. What does Bataille say Nietzschean pride comes from?

4. What circumstances must be in place for the science function to be served, in Bataille's account in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"?

5. What does the homogeneous part of society purchase?

(see the answer keys)

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