Autodidact, from the Greek meaning self-taught.
After watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox last week, I plurked about Tony's methods and was promptly asked if I was a TA. I was quick to correct Halfdome and say that I wasn't, but I can fully understand where he could get that idea. Whether I mean to or not, I have a way of stating my opinions with a kind of force that comes across as either knowledgeable or arrogant depending on whether or not I actually know what I'm talking about.
I'm an autodidact of patterns and connections. Gestault -- whom I've brought up previously -- would be my chosen school of psychology. I observe. I watch. I see. I listen. There will always be a part of my consciousness paying attention and squirreling information away for future comparison.
You say 2. They say 2. I can usually figure out together you're making 4.
Now that I'm actually thinking about it, this probably explains why I love film noir so much, but I digress.
Parasites, much like it's predecessor, Nanotexts, and I'm sure the majority of the other English classes Tony has taught where a majority of the course work takes place outside of the formal classroom setting, lends itself especially well to the autodidactic.
http://www.plurk.com/p/3mr7ne
Assignments like our blog posts and thought experiments with rather loosely defined prompts offer themselves towards the kind of self-induced exploration of ideas that most traditional midterm-and-research-paper English classes fail at providing for.
@nanotext mentioned the idea of multiplex consciousness in an offhand plurk back in December while I was enrolled in the GLBT Literature course. It was an example of his thoughts of the moment, that fleeting experience of multiplicity as many windows opened not only through into this digital world of plurk and wave and blogs, but also into the mind. Nanotext has multiplex consciousness.
Like one of those thought parasites, this small idea infected me and remained nearby, a postulation on the sense of identity tickling me as the Fool developed.
So when we came to our thought experiment, it seemed only natural that my exploration would be into multiplexity and how it relates to this parasite of the mind. Some of the best reading I've done for this class has not come from the assigned texts, but the supplementary books I have found within Tony's library and online and drawing the lines that I saw connecting them.
But at the same time, there exists a danger in this. Distraction and interruption. Diversion. It's a fickle balancing act between staying focused at the task -- in this case readings -- at hand and those supplementary articles that we devour alongside them.
I can tell already you see where I'm going with this. The word is on your lips. With all his talk of eating and shared tables, Serres has trained you well in identifying these parasites.
3 comments:
to play the devils advocate at the risk of sounding picky: i find all courses require me to teach myself the material. if i didnt do the homework for math 112, even if i attended every lecture, i'd fail. if i didn't do the reading for my courses, i'd be lost. is autodidactism encouraged, a part of tony's plan? i'd argue that Parasites has everything to do with the world at large and thus the apparent lack of structure to the course. but i chose the word apparent because at the end of the day there is a message, there is a direction.
its hard to gauge tone on the internet; i don't mean this as an attack, just some thoughts i had while reading.
But therein lies the difference. Part of what it means to be an autodidact is that you are not told what you are teaching yourself, you find it yourself. In most of my studies related to this class, I view Tony as a resource more than I do a professor.
I try to take the initiative of finding what's available from his resources. Like going to a library and picking books for the most part, I don't have someone else giving me a reading list.
touche. but i do think there is some kind of Parasites mission statement. "the producer plays the contents, the parasite the position." at any rate, i enjoy reading your blog because you are solid at extracting the mission statement
Post a Comment