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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the purpose of the Popular Front, in Bataille's account?
(a) To overthrow the Vichy government.
(b) To oppose Hitler.
(c) To oppose immigrants in France.
(d) To oppose fascism in France.

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

3. What does Bataille say is the contradiction in Christians worshiping God?
(a) They hold people to scripture in private life but not in the marketplace.
(b) They only go to church one day a week, but work the other six in profane employments.
(c) They keep the poor down while their worship exalts them.
(d) They elevate God's power, but claim it for themselves alone.

4. What does Bataille say man demanded of the earth?
(a) Necessity above the universe.
(b) Productivity on the earth.
(c) Consolation below the earth.
(d) Answers.

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

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

7. What did Bataille intend to define "The Critique of the Foundations of the Hegelian Dialectic"?
(a) Dialectic philosophy.
(b) Dialectic limits.
(c) Dialectic politics.
(d) Dialectic aesthetics.

8. What does Bataille describe in "The Critique of the Foundations of the Hegelian Dialectic"?
(a) How Hegel's dialectic method inspired revolutions.
(b) How Marx's dialectic method was misinterpreted.
(c) How Marx's dialectic method was developed.
(d) How Marx's dialectic method was critiqued.

9. What kinds of expenditure does artistic production require?
(a) Public or patron expenditure.
(b) Religious or secular expenditure.
(c) Real or symbolic expenditure.
(d) Patron or market expenditure.

10. What value does money articulate for workers?
(a) The value of what they produce.
(b) The value of their ideas.
(c) The value of their personal worth.
(d) The value of their status.

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

12. What does Bataille say would result from a difference of events in his experience?
(a) He would reveal his alter-ego.
(b) He would be at war with himself.
(c) He would be an other.
(d) He would have to confront his true self.

13. What is the significance of the obelisk in "The Obelisk"?
(a) It represents captured glory.
(b) It stands for the sovereign.
(c) It represents the ruling party.
(d) It organizes space by looming over it.

14. When is the 'me' free to accept individuality and transcendence, in Bataille's opinion in "Sacrifices"?
(a) When it is dying by violence.
(b) When it is dying in freedom.
(c) When it is dying in peace.
(d) When it is dying in religion.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bataille describe as a symptom of cultural crisis?

2. What did professor Hartmann dispute about the treatment of the Marx/Hegel dialectic?

3. What was Nietzsche's life dominated by, in Bataille's account?

4. Why is classical utility theory inadequate, in Bataille's opinion?

5. What does Bataille say about a man who knows his neighbors?

(see the answer keys)

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