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I don't think people process information in a linear way, if you know what I mean. I think what you're doing is, as you say, quickly assimilating a little about a lot; over the next months or years, connections will be made in your head that will enable new ways of thinking and possibly drive you to seek out more in-depth stuff about particular things. This bit is just laying down new paths in your head; eventually you'll find out, as you choose (through a combination of conscious and unconscious motives) to travel down particular paths, that you need to know certain things in more depth to progress, and you'll seek them out. That's based on the way I see my own head working, anyway.
The structure of the BA in Cultural Studies I teach on works on a similar principle. The first years have two semesters of an introductory course which gives them, like, a week on Marx, a week on ideology, a week on Freud, a week on Lacan, a week on sexual difference, a week on modernism, a week on postmodernism, a week on queer theory, a week on postcolonialism, etc. Obviously this is ridiculous in terms of becoming fluent in those theories, but, firstly, we hope that throwing so many different ways of reading and analyzing culture at the students encourages a sort of paradigm shift, so that they learn that everything is up for grabs and they can put any point of reference into question according to a different paradigm, and secondly it allows them to make connections which will be helpful when they decide to study something in depth in second and third years (where they can, for example, do an entire semester-long module on sexual difference or Freud).
Would anyone mind if I moved this thread to Conversation, by the way? It's one of those consciousness-raising / advice/ experience-sharing type threads that is borderline Conversation/Head Shop, but I sort of feel it's more Conversationy on the whole. |
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