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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 say about a man who knows his neighbors?
(a) He maintains his place in society by a network of lies and half-truths.
(b) He is larger than himself in his connection with an organic whole.
(c) He replaces his life with the life of the community.
(d) He is a particle connected by instability to an entangled whole.

2. When does being become undefined, according to Bataille?
(a) When it is projected beyond itself.
(b) When it is projected on an unworthy object.
(c) When it is discovered in another.
(d) When it is drawn from imagination.

3. What does Bataille describe as a symptom of cultural crisis?
(a) Technological incompetence.
(b) Outrageous profits.
(c) Administrative impudence.
(d) Bureaucratic regulation.

4. What are the two classes Bataille divides consumption into?
(a) Conspicuous consumption and invisible consumption.
(b) Productive consumption and wasteful consumption.
(c) Conservation of life and productive activity.
(d) Sacrificial consumption and gift consumption.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bataille say is the only virtue for fascists?

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

3. What aspect of the Marx/Hegel dialectic did professor Hartmann test?

4. What does Bataille describe in "The Critique of the Foundations of the Hegelian Dialectic"?

5. When does an obelisk cease to be meaningful?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Bataille's notion of potlatch.

2. How does the artist give meaning in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"?

3. How does Andre Masson create the tone of the drawings in the book for which Bataille wrote a preface?

4. What will cause the death and resurrection of God, in Bataille's account in "Propositions"?

5. Briefly describe the theory of conspicuous consumption.

6. What is the importance of the obelisk in "The Obelisk"?

7. What does Bataille say is the only true liberating act, in "Propositions"?

8. How does Bataille reconcile the opposition between self and world in "Sacrifices"?

9. How does a man find himself in "The Labyrinth"?

10. How did Nietzsche respond to the decay of his culture, according to Bataille's essay "Nietzschean Chronicle"?

(see the answer keys)

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