How has the use of Kritiks and Performance in debate changed what debate is and the role it plays outside of a debate round?
At my very first debate tournament, I argued that the United States Federal Government should mine lunar resources because it would be key to U.S. technological competitiveness, and the colonization of space would assure human survival. Conversely, by my second year in debate, I was arguing that the displacement and imprisonment of bodies, whether in their oppressive communities, or in the prison industrial complex is what made the existence of that year’s debate topic (transportation infrastructure) possible by deeming the strategy of imprisonment to be the most radiant form of institutional racism since slavery. The first argument is an example of “traditional” policy debate, and the second, “Kritikal” or Performance, policy debate.
Policy debate is traditionally known as a type of debate in which two teams, consisting of two people on each team, advocate for or against a resolution, a potential policy change by the United States Federal Government (USFG). Each debate is roughly an hour and a half long and is decided by a judge, typically a coach of another team, or a high school or college debater. One partnership is the “Affirmative,” the team who provides the round with a plan, advocacy, or course of action, and the other is the “Negative,” the team that negates the Affirmative by identifying the disadvantages the plan may have, offering their own counterplan, or claiming that the plan is “untopical,” or doesn’t uphold the resolution. Traditional policy teams will typically have the USFG “do” their plan via “fiat,” meaning should the judge vote Affirmative, the plan would immediately be enacted. So how did such a policy-oriented, competitive, and at many, many times agonizing activity influence me so much as a person? Perhaps it was the type of policy debate I was introduced to: Performance debate.
Since the 90’s, “Kritikal” and “Performance” debate has been gaining popularity in both the college and high school policy debate circuits. These new forms of debate and their usages have challenged what debate is and have changed the role it plays outside of a debate round by putting a particular emphasis on social issues. Before debate, surely I acknowledged that there were certain structural and institutional limitations in our society, but I never knew the history behind them, the roles they played in different people’s lives, or to what extent they existed. It was only with performance debate and Kritiks did I begin to explore the plethora of issues that exist and stain the U.S. The Kritik (what Performance debate stems from) was first coined by Bill Shanahan, a current debate coach at Binghamton University, in the ‘90s. The Kritik can be used by either the affirmative or negative team and is used to critique the plan or the resolution for supporting a troublesome mindset or ideology that can potentially aggregate a societal issue by disrupting debate norms. One of the most crucial parts of Kritkal debate is enacting yourself as the actor of your advocacy rather than the USFG, something my partner and I did in the aforementioned prisons argument. In return, traditional policy debaters will often disengage with Kritikal arguments and point out that not enacting the USFG as the actor is breaking one of the most fundamental rules of debate. However, Robert Antonio, Professor of Philosophy at University of Kansas, in his article, “Nietzche’s Antisociology: Subjectified Culture and the End of History” would argue that roleplaying politicians, what enacting the USFG to do a plan really is, leads to passivity and an inability for the role-player, in the context of policy debate, a high-school student, to empathize with the marginalized and oppressed. He writes, “...persons (especially male professionals) in specialized occupations overidentify with their positions...They are so thoroughly absorbed in simulating effective role players that they have trouble being anything but actors...This highly subjectified social self or simulator suffers devastating inauthenticity.” Performance debate takes this form of rebellion one step forward.
There are other ways in which performance debaters disrupt the normalcy of debate. Performance debaters often use personal memoirs, narratives, dance, music like hip hop, rap, and even during one debate, Lady Gaga in their arguments. For instance, last year’s resolution called for economic engagement with Venezuela, Cuba, or Mexico. My partner and I led a sermon as our Affirmative and advocated for Liberation Theology, a movement that started in the 1950s in Latin America which promoted peace, justice, and solidarity, as well as encouraged people to engage in community building rather than relying on their poorly run bureaucratic states. The sermon was a form of rebellion in more than one way: Not only did we use ourselves as actors, but we also talked during each other’s speeches, read poems, and played music. While we were not a topical plan because we didn’t enact the USFG, we were a discussion of the topic, which we argued is a prerequisite to actual policymaking considering past policies between the U.S. and Latin American countries has been inherently exploitative.
There are many reasons as to why debaters reject traditional policy debate for performance policy debate. In a traditional policy debate round, the majority of it will be spent arguing over nuclear war scenarios, which poor third-world country to exploit next, and the best method to increase America’s hegemony. Performance debaters, instead, use the debate space to talk about controversial topics that traditional policy debaters don’t want to talk about, such as current issues that affect them, someone they know, or a large group in society in a negative way, as well as offer their ideas as to how to address these societal issues.
Some debaters rebel and go into performance debate because they feel excluded from society and debate is the only place where they feel safe enough to talk about their exclusion. However, they are inevitably met with opposition from traditional policy teams, much like how those excluded in our own society are met with opposition from certain politicians. Thus, it’s suitable to say that there are many parallels between the society we live in and the society of debate. For instance, we live in a society where the “norm” is to be white, male, heterosexual, and well-off. Unsurprisingly, the first debaters ever were white, male, and well-off. That was in the nineteenth century. However, if you were to look up the recent winners of the Tournament of Champions, the biggest and most important high-school debate tournament, you’ll find that the majority of them are white, male, and well-off.
There are people who argue that the most important aspect of debate and most foolproof way to win rounds is to learn to be persuasive. I disagree. If the most foolproof way to win rounds is to be persuasive, that assumes debate is about winning. Debate isn’t about winning, or, moreover, it shouldn’t be. Debate is about education. If we view debate to be just about winning, students would be complacent about the world around them and failed USFG policies will be justified and perpetuated. In addition, traditional policy debaters will argue that debate is about gaining portable and decision making skills. Yet, El Kilombo Intergalatico, a group from North Carolina that focuses on community politics, would argue that the portable skills that debaters learn in debate can be parallel with the decision making skills of modern day politicians, which are often exclusionary and solely catered to the rich and privileged as they are the people that support legislative politics. These skills are thus educationally and socially bankrupt as “the politics of the politicians...has been completely eliminated as a site for public deliberation, or for the construction of the previously existing nation-state. The politics of the politicians has been redirected and its new function is that of the implementation and administration of the local influence of transnational corporations.” The normative notion of portable and decision making skills justifies problematic actions such exploiting a country and then sending aid packages. Education, however, doesn’t discriminate and is something that all debaters can access. I think people often forget that at the end of the day, or debate round for that matter, we are just a bunch of teenagers spending our weekends talking about policies. The majority of us aren’t going to be politicians in the near future, or even want to be politicians, so we might as well make the most of the activity and debate over who has the best methodology for addressing a societal issue rather than claiming that “X,Y, and Z” will happen should a particular USFG policy pass. Perhaps then debate wouldn’t be such a rehash of the same outdated, stodgy, arguments taken straight from the Heritage Foundation or CATO in a callous effort to acquire ballots, win tournaments, and gain reputation. Perhaps then debate will actually produce scholarship that we as citizens can use to lead the U.S. in a better direction.
Performance debaters and traditional policy teams will often disagree on what the role of the ballot is and what it means for the judge to vote Affirmative or Negative. Traditional policy teams will argue that the acquiring the ballot means the policy has passed, the plan solves all the harms they outlined, and that we’ve probably successfully dodged Taiwan’s plan to nuke us. However, acquiring a ballot for Performance debaters instead is an affirmation of a team’s advocacy. When a judge votes for my partner and I he or she is communicating that our advocacy is a good idea that might actually do some good in the world and is preferable over the status quo. Traditional policy teams often talk about how performance arguments are killing education; what these teams, unfortunately, don’t realize is that researching an issue in society and offering an elaborate advocacy, whether it be through rhetoric, dance, sermon, etc. to deal with said issue is the closest anyone will ever get to reaching the full educational potential debate has to offer, and is surely more educational than their pre-written, uncreative answers, and their mundane, and highly theoretical arguments. Josh Branson, Harvard Law school Graduate and former college debater says “Forcing yourself to adapt to circumstances in which you’re not comfortable, being made to alter your thinking on the run when you don’t have your same old stale blocks, when you have to make new cognitive connections and investigate literature bases which you are not familiar? I think THAT is the value-added of debate.”
Debate also leads to change outside of the confines of the debate round. For instance, a few years ago, a grassroots youth-of-colour-led-think-tank and debate camp, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) protested against the increase of youth prisons in Baltimore, Maryland. The mayor of Baltimore issued an increase of youth prisons, but ignored the actual decrease in youth crime. As a response, LBS sponsored “Battle: Bar None” to educate the community, and in particular young children, about the problem. Now, just recently LBS stated that they were working on preventative programs in the community to reduce potential incarceration. The leaders of this movement are all former high school and college debaters, many of which have judged me at most national tournaments, and the members of this movement are my peers. This is just one way in which the discourses that Performance debaters facilitate in debate rounds spills over into the real world and changes community politics.
Debate has not only expanded my mind, given me the pleasure of meeting some of the best educators out there, but has also taught me the power of meaningful and educational discourse and how the discussions Performance debaters have can influence and change the world around them. Debate changed my life. Although it was at times agonizing and stressful, I don’t regret joining for a second.
Works Cited
Antonio, Robert, Professor of Philosophy at University of Kansas, “Nietzsche's Antisociology: Subjectified Culture and the End of History,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 1, pp. 1-43)
Branson, Josh, NDT/TOC winner from Northwestern & St. Marks, Harvard Law school Graduate, Current lawyer; http://cedadebate.org/pipermail/mailman/2007-November/072458.html
El Kilombo Intergalatico. Beyond Resistance: Everything An Interview With
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.. Durham, NC: Paperboat Press, 2007. 1-10. Print.
Law, Victoria. "LBS featured in national news outlet for youth jail fight." LBS Baltimore. Truthout Magazine, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://lbsbaltimore.com/lbs-featured-national-news-outlet-youth-jail-fight/>.
At my very first debate tournament, I argued that the United States Federal Government should mine lunar resources because it would be key to U.S. technological competitiveness, and the colonization of space would assure human survival. Conversely, by my second year in debate, I was arguing that the displacement and imprisonment of bodies, whether in their oppressive communities, or in the prison industrial complex is what made the existence of that year’s debate topic (transportation infrastructure) possible by deeming the strategy of imprisonment to be the most radiant form of institutional racism since slavery. The first argument is an example of “traditional” policy debate, and the second, “Kritikal” or Performance, policy debate.
Policy debate is traditionally known as a type of debate in which two teams, consisting of two people on each team, advocate for or against a resolution, a potential policy change by the United States Federal Government (USFG). Each debate is roughly an hour and a half long and is decided by a judge, typically a coach of another team, or a high school or college debater. One partnership is the “Affirmative,” the team who provides the round with a plan, advocacy, or course of action, and the other is the “Negative,” the team that negates the Affirmative by identifying the disadvantages the plan may have, offering their own counterplan, or claiming that the plan is “untopical,” or doesn’t uphold the resolution. Traditional policy teams will typically have the USFG “do” their plan via “fiat,” meaning should the judge vote Affirmative, the plan would immediately be enacted. So how did such a policy-oriented, competitive, and at many, many times agonizing activity influence me so much as a person? Perhaps it was the type of policy debate I was introduced to: Performance debate.
Since the 90’s, “Kritikal” and “Performance” debate has been gaining popularity in both the college and high school policy debate circuits. These new forms of debate and their usages have challenged what debate is and have changed the role it plays outside of a debate round by putting a particular emphasis on social issues. Before debate, surely I acknowledged that there were certain structural and institutional limitations in our society, but I never knew the history behind them, the roles they played in different people’s lives, or to what extent they existed. It was only with performance debate and Kritiks did I begin to explore the plethora of issues that exist and stain the U.S. The Kritik (what Performance debate stems from) was first coined by Bill Shanahan, a current debate coach at Binghamton University, in the ‘90s. The Kritik can be used by either the affirmative or negative team and is used to critique the plan or the resolution for supporting a troublesome mindset or ideology that can potentially aggregate a societal issue by disrupting debate norms. One of the most crucial parts of Kritkal debate is enacting yourself as the actor of your advocacy rather than the USFG, something my partner and I did in the aforementioned prisons argument. In return, traditional policy debaters will often disengage with Kritikal arguments and point out that not enacting the USFG as the actor is breaking one of the most fundamental rules of debate. However, Robert Antonio, Professor of Philosophy at University of Kansas, in his article, “Nietzche’s Antisociology: Subjectified Culture and the End of History” would argue that roleplaying politicians, what enacting the USFG to do a plan really is, leads to passivity and an inability for the role-player, in the context of policy debate, a high-school student, to empathize with the marginalized and oppressed. He writes, “...persons (especially male professionals) in specialized occupations overidentify with their positions...They are so thoroughly absorbed in simulating effective role players that they have trouble being anything but actors...This highly subjectified social self or simulator suffers devastating inauthenticity.” Performance debate takes this form of rebellion one step forward.
There are other ways in which performance debaters disrupt the normalcy of debate. Performance debaters often use personal memoirs, narratives, dance, music like hip hop, rap, and even during one debate, Lady Gaga in their arguments. For instance, last year’s resolution called for economic engagement with Venezuela, Cuba, or Mexico. My partner and I led a sermon as our Affirmative and advocated for Liberation Theology, a movement that started in the 1950s in Latin America which promoted peace, justice, and solidarity, as well as encouraged people to engage in community building rather than relying on their poorly run bureaucratic states. The sermon was a form of rebellion in more than one way: Not only did we use ourselves as actors, but we also talked during each other’s speeches, read poems, and played music. While we were not a topical plan because we didn’t enact the USFG, we were a discussion of the topic, which we argued is a prerequisite to actual policymaking considering past policies between the U.S. and Latin American countries has been inherently exploitative.
There are many reasons as to why debaters reject traditional policy debate for performance policy debate. In a traditional policy debate round, the majority of it will be spent arguing over nuclear war scenarios, which poor third-world country to exploit next, and the best method to increase America’s hegemony. Performance debaters, instead, use the debate space to talk about controversial topics that traditional policy debaters don’t want to talk about, such as current issues that affect them, someone they know, or a large group in society in a negative way, as well as offer their ideas as to how to address these societal issues.
Some debaters rebel and go into performance debate because they feel excluded from society and debate is the only place where they feel safe enough to talk about their exclusion. However, they are inevitably met with opposition from traditional policy teams, much like how those excluded in our own society are met with opposition from certain politicians. Thus, it’s suitable to say that there are many parallels between the society we live in and the society of debate. For instance, we live in a society where the “norm” is to be white, male, heterosexual, and well-off. Unsurprisingly, the first debaters ever were white, male, and well-off. That was in the nineteenth century. However, if you were to look up the recent winners of the Tournament of Champions, the biggest and most important high-school debate tournament, you’ll find that the majority of them are white, male, and well-off.
There are people who argue that the most important aspect of debate and most foolproof way to win rounds is to learn to be persuasive. I disagree. If the most foolproof way to win rounds is to be persuasive, that assumes debate is about winning. Debate isn’t about winning, or, moreover, it shouldn’t be. Debate is about education. If we view debate to be just about winning, students would be complacent about the world around them and failed USFG policies will be justified and perpetuated. In addition, traditional policy debaters will argue that debate is about gaining portable and decision making skills. Yet, El Kilombo Intergalatico, a group from North Carolina that focuses on community politics, would argue that the portable skills that debaters learn in debate can be parallel with the decision making skills of modern day politicians, which are often exclusionary and solely catered to the rich and privileged as they are the people that support legislative politics. These skills are thus educationally and socially bankrupt as “the politics of the politicians...has been completely eliminated as a site for public deliberation, or for the construction of the previously existing nation-state. The politics of the politicians has been redirected and its new function is that of the implementation and administration of the local influence of transnational corporations.” The normative notion of portable and decision making skills justifies problematic actions such exploiting a country and then sending aid packages. Education, however, doesn’t discriminate and is something that all debaters can access. I think people often forget that at the end of the day, or debate round for that matter, we are just a bunch of teenagers spending our weekends talking about policies. The majority of us aren’t going to be politicians in the near future, or even want to be politicians, so we might as well make the most of the activity and debate over who has the best methodology for addressing a societal issue rather than claiming that “X,Y, and Z” will happen should a particular USFG policy pass. Perhaps then debate wouldn’t be such a rehash of the same outdated, stodgy, arguments taken straight from the Heritage Foundation or CATO in a callous effort to acquire ballots, win tournaments, and gain reputation. Perhaps then debate will actually produce scholarship that we as citizens can use to lead the U.S. in a better direction.
Performance debaters and traditional policy teams will often disagree on what the role of the ballot is and what it means for the judge to vote Affirmative or Negative. Traditional policy teams will argue that the acquiring the ballot means the policy has passed, the plan solves all the harms they outlined, and that we’ve probably successfully dodged Taiwan’s plan to nuke us. However, acquiring a ballot for Performance debaters instead is an affirmation of a team’s advocacy. When a judge votes for my partner and I he or she is communicating that our advocacy is a good idea that might actually do some good in the world and is preferable over the status quo. Traditional policy teams often talk about how performance arguments are killing education; what these teams, unfortunately, don’t realize is that researching an issue in society and offering an elaborate advocacy, whether it be through rhetoric, dance, sermon, etc. to deal with said issue is the closest anyone will ever get to reaching the full educational potential debate has to offer, and is surely more educational than their pre-written, uncreative answers, and their mundane, and highly theoretical arguments. Josh Branson, Harvard Law school Graduate and former college debater says “Forcing yourself to adapt to circumstances in which you’re not comfortable, being made to alter your thinking on the run when you don’t have your same old stale blocks, when you have to make new cognitive connections and investigate literature bases which you are not familiar? I think THAT is the value-added of debate.”
Debate also leads to change outside of the confines of the debate round. For instance, a few years ago, a grassroots youth-of-colour-led-think-tank and debate camp, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) protested against the increase of youth prisons in Baltimore, Maryland. The mayor of Baltimore issued an increase of youth prisons, but ignored the actual decrease in youth crime. As a response, LBS sponsored “Battle: Bar None” to educate the community, and in particular young children, about the problem. Now, just recently LBS stated that they were working on preventative programs in the community to reduce potential incarceration. The leaders of this movement are all former high school and college debaters, many of which have judged me at most national tournaments, and the members of this movement are my peers. This is just one way in which the discourses that Performance debaters facilitate in debate rounds spills over into the real world and changes community politics.
Debate has not only expanded my mind, given me the pleasure of meeting some of the best educators out there, but has also taught me the power of meaningful and educational discourse and how the discussions Performance debaters have can influence and change the world around them. Debate changed my life. Although it was at times agonizing and stressful, I don’t regret joining for a second.
Works Cited
Antonio, Robert, Professor of Philosophy at University of Kansas, “Nietzsche's Antisociology: Subjectified Culture and the End of History,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 1, pp. 1-43)
Branson, Josh, NDT/TOC winner from Northwestern & St. Marks, Harvard Law school Graduate, Current lawyer; http://cedadebate.org/pipermail/mailman/2007-November/072458.html
El Kilombo Intergalatico. Beyond Resistance: Everything An Interview With
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.. Durham, NC: Paperboat Press, 2007. 1-10. Print.
Law, Victoria. "LBS featured in national news outlet for youth jail fight." LBS Baltimore. Truthout Magazine, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://lbsbaltimore.com/lbs-featured-national-news-outlet-youth-jail-fight/>.