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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. How did Leiris portray Bataille to Breton?
(a) As a genius.
(b) As a pornographer.
(c) As a prophet.
(d) As obsessed.

2. How does Bataille describe producing and selling in "The Use Value of D. A. F. de Sade"?
(a) As revolutionary phases.
(b) As consumptive phases.
(c) As excretory phases.
(d) As primitive phases.

3. 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.

4. What writer coined the term conspicuous consumption?
(a) Hegel.
(b) Marx.
(c) Engels.
(d) Veblen.

5. What did Bataille describe in "The Lugubrious Game"?
(a) A brown smudge.
(b) Bestiality.
(c) Anal fixation.
(d) Sex play with eyeballs.

Short Answer Questions

1. How do the rats appear in "[Dream]"?

2. What flower is Marquis de Sade plucking petals off, at the end of "The Language of Flowers"?

3. What does Bataille say was the driving force beneath his heterodox theory?

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

5. In "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh", how long does Bataille say it took Van Gogh to paint suns after his self-mutilation?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What distinguished the big toe in "The Big Toe"?

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

4. What was Bataille's objection to Nietzsche?

5. Describe Bataille's experience with psychoanalysis.

6. What is Bataille's relationship with Hegel?

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

8. What was Bataille's relationship with Andrea Breton?

9. What is the value of Gnosticism in "Base Materialism and Gnosticism"

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

(see the answer keys)

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