LD's Final Frontier- Critiques of the Kritik (2of 2)
By Rodrigo Paramo
10/12/13
This is thesecond part of a series of articles on the K in LD. While the first partfocused on an overview of how the K functions in round and justified itscompatibility with current LD norms, this article will focus on the benefits ofkritiks as a way for competitors to create a more accepting community and a wayto tap into an area of philosophical thought that is too commonly disregardedin LD today, as well as examining common arguments against allowing the K toflourish in our community.
Note: Afterthe first part of this series, some concerns were raised about the conflationof postmodern philosophy with the kritik as an argumentative form. I feel itnecessary to clarify that though there are distinctions between the two, thisarticle makes arguments supporting the proliferation of both throughout the LDcommunity.
Allowing for the kritik to bea more communally acceptable practice will be an uncomfortable process: forevery debater who criticizes capitalism, we’re likely to see one who criticizesthe debate space as unnecessarily exclusionary. This is not something to runfrom. Opening debate as a space more willing to accept critical argumentationis the first step in a long road towards allowing debate to become a homespacefor individuals who are typically marginalized from the activity and fromsociety at large. Critical debate gives a voice to the voiceless, and the roadwe will have to tread to challenge exclusionary norms is one best traveledtogether: allowing the K to propagate in LD allows for the voiceless to createcoalitions within the community and makes it harder to deny that exclusionexists. If nothing else, the kritik allows us to take the first step towardsengaging in a more inclusive, more educational activity.
I’ve judged 18 rounds on thistopic and I find that I learn the most from, and find myself most engaged in,the rounds that move past the omnipresent theory debates and instead engage inan intellectual discussion over feminine empowerment, the biopolitical natureof the state, or the problems with democratic thought. I also find that notonly do these debate rounds require intervention on the part of the judge muchless frequently than those that appeal to subjective conceptions of fairnessand education, at the end of the round I feel like I’ve truly been a part ofsomething that matters. Even if we can’t come to a fool-proof solution foroppression within the time constraints of a debate round, engaging in thesediscussions as high school students provides a space for debaters to gainknowledge about the world around them and be exposed to the realities ofoppression they might not otherwise understand. Ensuring the community is awareof the benefits of critical debate would go a long way towards alleviating someof the tension critical debaters encounter when they try to present a kritik asa viable strategy.
For a lot of debaters, a weekend tournament is an escape from the harsh realities of everyday life. Much like the population at large, there exist segments of the debate community who must deal with abusive home lives, struggles with their sexual identities, psychological disorders, and/or ostracism in their academic environments (this is just a surface level list of some of the more common issues students have to experience and is by no means exhaustive). I speak from experience when I say that for these students, the debate community allows a sanctuary, a place where for 2 days a week I (and others like me) could speak to political questions without having my voice immediately shot down, a place where my sexuality was not immediately discarded as a phase that I’d eventually move past. In its purest form, the community has the potential to be a safe space for the oppressed.
Unfortunately, my personalexperiences with the community as an accepting place do not extend to alldebaters in my position: I was privileged enough to attend a high school wheremy coach taught me about kritiks and encouraged that the arguments I read havesome personal significance. For all too many debaters, the kritik is a foreignconcept that they’ve been dissuaded against because it tends to lose more thanit wins. They’ve been taught that the kritik kills debate, that it’s justanother generic argument to avoid topic-specific education. The problem withperpetuating these falsehoods is easy to identify. The kritik is an invaluabletool not only to allow individuals to engage in a process of self-discovery,but also to learn about the topic from previously masked viewpoints.
It’s important to note thataccepting these discourses does not mean they would be held to a lower standardthan other positions currently accepted in the debate space. While in the firstpart of this article I addressed traditional kritiks existing within currentmodels of debate, I recognize that these arguments about personal experiencewould require some changes to current LD debate and I do believe that thesedebaters would have to justify those changes. Accepting that arguments aboutpersonal experience and oppression within the debate community are valid doesnot mean that every debater who mentions structural injustices should win theballot. It simply means that debaters who wish to speak out against thesesystems of oppression should be given that opportunity. While they should stillhave to justify those discussions within the debate space, and the role of theballot in those rounds would be up to the competitors, these arguments wouldnot immediately be discounted as attempts to circumvent resolutionaldiscussions and would instead be recognized as discussions that may have aplace in LD debate.
Debate forces debaters todefend both sides of a topic without care to who the debater is, or how thetopic intersects with their personal experiences. This is where the gateway todiscussions about personal oppression begins to open. As a community, I amcomfortable saying we wouldn’t force students to defend a resolution thatstated: Resolved: Slavery is a morally permissible economic system. Yet topicscontinue to be chosen which put debaters in positions where they have to defendsystems that historically clash with their identities.
For example, the upcomingNovember/December topic places debaters in a position where affirmativedebaters will likely have to defend the criminal justice system as a desirablesystem, even though that same criminal justice system is often viewed as being partand parcel of a system of institutional racism. African-American debaters I’vespoken to in the last weeks feel uncomfortable being forced to defend a systemthat historically disadvantages them, but if they want to participate in thecommunity for the next two months, they have to find a way to engage with thetopic substantively that does not force them to defend their own oppression. Ifthey justify their approach to the resolution, why should we as a communitytell them that those arguments are not allowed within LD debate?
Yet these debaters are oftentold that a debate round is the wrong forum for discussions of oppressionbecause these discussions force opponents to either advocate that oppression isgood or to forfeit the round. Such a reductionist approach of critical debateis damaging to the intellectual discussions that could potentially occur ifthese rounds were more readily accepted.
For instance, at theGreenhill tournament I saw an affirmative that discussed structural oppressionagainst the feminine body in Pakistan, and provided a policy option for how toresolve this. While a plan is a strange format for a kritik to take, it drewfrom a similar literature base, critiqued problems within the status quo, andprovided an alternative to rectify that. The negative in this round did notsimply forfeit, instead she provided an alternative methodology to combatoppression with a different starting point. The possibility for these rounds tooccur provides a compelling reason for these discussions of oppression to bemore readily acceptable.
This round is a poignantexample of how kritiks can effectively increase topic-specific education pastcommon debates that barely skim the surface on Kantian deontology or costbenefit analysis. The realm of philosophy that is well suited for a criticalframing allows for a discussion of the topics from previously ignoredperspectives. There’s no shortage to what critical philosophers are willing tocriticize, and opening the debate space for these arguments would resolve a lotof the theoretical arguments commonly raised against the kritik. The kritikallows for an increase in the quality of the ground debaters have access to, nolonger limited to generic frameworks such as consequentialism or deontology.The amount of work that goes into molding coherent kritiks ensures a depth ofresearch and subsequent discussion, skills that extend past debate rounds intothe world around us.
When faced with advocaciesthat have a more tangential link to the topic which instead discuss thepersonal experiences of the affirmative, the negative would still be able togarner offense in the round by providing alternative starting points andmethodologies for these discussions of oppression. Though it is very true thata debate round will never provide us with a concrete solution to globalstructures of oppression, this should not deter debaters’ willingness to engagein these discussions. One of the first steps towards combatting oppression requirescommunity awareness of it. Kritiks (and again, the literature traditionallyassociated with them) provide a mechanism to begin communal dialogues thatwould otherwise get glossed over. It is more than possible to engage indiscussions of oppression without collapsing to morally repugnant advocacies,and though for some it might require breaching new territory, I believe thisconfrontation with the contrasting forces of oppression and privilege areimportant for students in this activity to understand the reality ofmarginalization that some members of our community experience on a daily basis.
Another common argumentagainst personal discussions is that a competitive activity provides the wrongforum for these positions. While debate is a competitive activity, it is also acommunity, and he value of the community should not be understated.Perpetuating norms that preclude certain branches of philosophy from enteringthe debate arena necessarily excludes those debaters who fall victim tostructural injustices outside of the debate community. If the only value indebate tournaments were the trophies you could win there, cafeterias would be alot less crowded at tournaments and far less cross-country travel would occur.The reality is that debate as an activity draws large parts of its value fromthe friendships that it fosters across the community, and telling individualsthat the arguments that hit close to home shouldn’t be allowed in the debatespace does them, and the community at large, a disservice. Our community isstrengthened through the inclusion of other voices, and for some bodies thatinclusion can only come about if we allow them to speak about their experiencesas they relate to the topic, or as they relate to the community at large.Competition does not necessitate ignoring the realities of oppression; rather,it means that the way dialogues of oppression are presented is integral totheir success.
Simply put, the kritik (andthe philosophy often tied to it) allows for individuals to engage in new debatepractices that open spaces for previously unheard perspectives. Debate as acompetitive activity should not frighten us away from allowing non-traditional argumentsinto the debate space. These arguments would still need justifications muchlike any other position, but they would no longer be immediately subject to unnecessary scrutiny. Allowing these discussions to occur in debate roundswould go a long way towards ensuring that the home space the community is for alot of us does not find itself drawing exclusionary borders. Only a willingnessto engage in these discussions can truly break down structural barriers to aninclusive community.
Some lastnotes for Debaters looking to read the Kritik:
Firstand foremost, even though there may be a lot of big words and complexrhetorical structures in the books that Ks are cut from, young debaters shouldnot be discouraged from delving into the world of the K. The largest reason forthis is that oftentimes the literature that people do read a lot of(traditional deontology, contract-based frameworks, etc) are as complex as someK literature and people only rely on them because debaters have been delvinginto this literature for a long time so it makes sense that you’ve had moreexposure to it over the course of your career.
Whiledebaters are often taught that tricky positions will squeak out easy wins byextending a single piece of evidence, kritiks provide their own strategicadvantages that make them just as viable. A lot of K frameworks supersedenormative questions of the truth or falsity of the resolution, which provides acompetitive incentive for debaters to read the K. Speaking to debaters revealsthat many of them choose the easier route of truth testing/theory because itmakes winning rounds easier compared to the K where debaters have to muddlethrough complex framing questions and extend all parts to win, all whilecombatting largely nonresponsive arguments from everybody's AT [insert authorof the K] files. The reality of thekritik is that it does take a lot of critical thinking to execute it properly,but that’s not a reason to be dissuaded against it. When structured properly,kritiks can provide strategic advantages against most any position.
Myfinal note is that though the kritik can provide challenges for debaters tojump over, there are rewards to be gained from it. The TOC champion this pastyear was pretty damn kritikal, and the NDT/CEDA champs were K debaters as well.As an argument, it has been proven to work, and if LD just needs a reason toadopt it, I hope this article can resolve residual doubts about the kritik as aviable strategy.
Shout out toJordan Durrani for his input. Couldn’t have done it without you.