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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What was Bataille summing up in his "Propositions"?
(a) His thoughts on Nietzschean metaphysics.
(b) His thoughts on the death of God.
(c) His thoughts on sex and perversity in modern life.
(d) His thoughts on modern culture.

3. What was Nietzsche's relationship with fascism, in Bataille's account?
(a) He was active in opposition to it.
(b) He was active in support of it.
(c) He claimed to be a prophet of a culture of power.
(d) He was opposed to political parties.

4. How does bourgeois society enslave and degrade poor men, in Bataille's opinion?
(a) By forcing them to compete with machines.
(b) By keeping them poor.
(c) By preventing them getting medical attention.
(d) By showering them with goods.

5. Whom does Bataille say can never touch the reality of earth?
(a) Those who do not understand it.
(b) Capitalists.
(c) Fascists.
(d) Those who exploit the earth for profit.

6. What tone did Andre Masson establish in his drawings?
(a) Biological-cosmological.
(b) Ashen-biological.
(c) Orgastic-ashen.
(d) Cosmological-orgiastic.

7. How did Bataille relate to Andre Masson's drawings?
(a) He saw himself as the lines and the paper themselves.
(b) He saw himself as the self in flight.
(c) He saw himself as the sick man.
(d) He saw himself as the entire cosmos.

8. What is the significance of the image of the labyrinth in the "The Labyrinth"?
(a) It is a symbol of man's inner state.
(b) It is a metaphor for social existence.
(c) It represents the deadly stakes in self-knowledge.
(d) It is a metaphor for being.

9. What does Bataille say money measures, in "Psychological Structure of Fascism"?
(a) Work.
(b) Money.
(c) Status.
(d) Power.

10. What results from acting in specialized areas, in Bataille's opinion in "The Labyrinth"?
(a) Man loses his innocence.
(b) Man is impoverished.
(c) Man conquers the universe in its details.
(d) Man becomes a specialist.

11. What did Bataille and Andre Masson dream about as Bataille was writing "The Labyrinth"?
(a) An obscene dream they could never publish.
(b) A dream they could not own.
(c) A dream they were expressing in drawings.
(d) A dream they were setting to music.

12. What does Bataille say democracy is based on?
(a) Free elections.
(b) A weak opposition.
(c) Free speech.
(d) Open debate.

13. Which of the following does Bataille NOT use as an example of unproductive expenditure without value beyond itself?
(a) Public gardens.
(b) War.
(c) Art.
(d) Luxuries.

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

15. From what does Bataille say Alfred Baumler distilled a doctrine of the people's will to power?
(a) Nietzschean politics.
(b) Nietzschean religion.
(c) Nietzschean contradiction.
(d) Nietzschean metaphor.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bataille say Nietzsche questions?

2. Which of the following is one of the directions recomposition of society can take?

3. What does Bataille say profit leads to, in "The Labyrinth"?

4. What did Hegel claim about nature?

5. When is the 'me' free to accept individuality and transcendence, in Bataille's opinion in "Sacrifices"?

(see the answer keys)

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