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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Bataille claim the world is in "The Solar Anus"?
(a) Parody.
(b) Tragedy.
(c) Farce.
(d) Comedy.

2. What critique does Bataille make in "The Critique of the Foundations of Hegelian Dialectic"?
(a) He criticizes the Oversoul as a childish fantasy.
(b) He mocks Marx and Engels for their idealism.
(c) He frees dialectical negation from Engels' mechanical abstraction.
(d) He demonstrated why dialectical materialism is inevitable.

3. Whom did the Popular Front join with?
(a) Bureaucrats and Communists.
(b) Democrats and Socialist Democrats.
(c) Communists and Socialists.
(d) Fascists and totalitarians.

4. How does surrealism rebel at first, in "The 'Old Mole' and the Prefix Sur in the Words Surhomme [Superman] and Surrealist"?
(a) With all the proletarians.
(b) Without the lower classes.
(c) With subtle disorientation of meaning.
(d) With all-out deformation of images.

5. What are flowers not matched by, in "The Language of Flowers"?
(a) The purity of the sunshine.
(b) The work of bees.
(c) A show of human love.
(d) The corrupt hands that pick them.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do flowers witness, in "The Language of Flowers"?

2. What claim does Bataille discuss in "The Deviations of Nature"?

3. How does Bataille describe his thinking in "Popular Front in the Street"?

4. Whom does Bataille refer to as untouchables in "Psychological Structure of Fascism"?

5. When did George Bataille die?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the mouth in "Mouth" compare with the eyeball in ''The Eye'?

2. What are the terrifying images in "[Dream]"?

3. How does the notion of parody apply to the sun in "The Solar Anus"?

4. Describe the importance of the 'cephalus' in Bataille's thinking.

5. Explain the title of the essay "The Use Value of D. A. F. de Sade".

6. How was Bataille's first book received?

7. What does Bataille say about 'freaks' in "The Deviations of Nature"?

8. Describe Bataille's involvement with the Popular Front.

9. How would you characterize Bataille's thoughts on society and economy?

10. What does Bataille say about surrealism in "The 'Old Mole' and the Prefix Sur in the Words Surhomme [Superman] and Surrealist"?

(see the answer keys)

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