German 273: Midterm Study Guide (2024)

German 273: God & Money Study Guide Midterm 28 October 2024 Section 1: Definitions à à à 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Exam will include several options from the list below. Explain the significance of the term in the context of the course. 2 sentences max. (for each definition) Immanent critique Species-being Commodity Use-value Robinson Crusoe Ideology Bolivia Eucharist Rosa Luxemburg Enclosure Proletariat Bourgeoisie Section 2: Short Answers à à Exam will include several options from the list below. 5-6 sentences max. (for each question) 1. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx writes: “Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.” How does this quote explain Marx’s critique of Feuerbach? 2. How does Feuerbach’s concept of religious alienation help Marx understand the alienation of the worker under capitalism? 3. Marx writes: “Equality in the full sense between different kinds of labour can be arrived at only if we abstract from their real inequality, if we reduce them to the characteristic they have in common, that of being the expenditure of human labour-power, of human labour in the abstract” (EPM, 166). What does Marx mean by “inequality of labor type” in this passage? 4. What is Taussig’s criticism of and answer to the “functionalist” explanation for devil beliefs in South America? 5. In her essay on medieval money, Aden Kumler writes: “[The host] was a serially produced monochrome multiple in a world filled with handcrafted utica, objects that laid bare their fracture in chisel marks, stitches, brushstrokes, and thumbprints” (187). How does this passage reflect Kumler’s argument about the relationship between coinage and religious ritual? 6. Compare Silvia Federici and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the question of “primitive accumulation”? 7. How does Cedric Robinson use Gerard’s heresy to offer a “different criticism of religion”?