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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 pyramids ensure?
(a) Eternal life.
(b) Glory for the monarchs inside them.
(c) The eternally egalitarian nature of death.
(d) Limitless sky on earth.

2. What claim does Bataille make in "The Obelisk"?
(a) That nationalism is never carved in stone.
(b) That there is no mystery in the world of spirit.
(c) That the past always has to be imported from elsewhere.
(d) That fascism is centered on the monuments it builds to itself.

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

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

5. What does Bataille define as a way to humiliate, defy, or obligate a poorer person as a show of destruction of wealth?
(a) Government subsidies.
(b) Welfare.
(c) Public Assistance.
(d) Potlatch.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does Bataille say would result from a difference of events in his experience?

3. What does Bataille say the theory of conspicuous consumption is used for?

4. What value does money articulate for workers?

5. Which of the following does Bataille NOT use as an example of unproductive expenditure without value beyond itself?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does contemporary society offer men in "The Sacred Conspiracy", and what does man demand for himself?

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

3. How does Bataille portray Engels' interpretation of Hegel's philosophy in "The Critique of the Foundations of the Hegelian Dialectic"?

4. What is Bataille's theme in "The Labyrinth"?

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

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

7. When does Bataille date the origin of the Popular Front to?

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

9. Summarize Nicolai Hartmann's interpretation of Hegel.

10. What is Bataille's interpretation of Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption?

(see the answer keys)

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