Critiquing the K

In a comment, LA Coach says:

As a policy debater that became an LD coach, I started off with a number of the same questions that your student had, including the use of kritiks.

The conclusion I came to was similar to yours, but with two significant caveats: the threshold of compelling need and the value of discursive critiques.

One of the most interesting arguments I've seen about torture warrants is the argument that we shouldn't be debating it at all. From both an educational and a moral standpoint, there are solid arguments that debating that topic will actually be detrimental to the long-term moral development of our students, which (to me) is a compelling reason to write a critique of it. While this is a well-documented argument, I happen to think that the threshold for interesting and compelling critical arguments is low enough that I'm happy to listen to them when they're well presented. Kritiks that are presented badly, however, get no sympathy.

Secondly, I think we need to take a step back and seriously consider the value of kritiks of discourse in LD. I don't mean simply "don't say X" arguments, but I do think there's value to helping students regulate the language used in rounds. I got so fed up with hearing about the Holocaust that I taught my novices a simple H-Triv kritik, and had a long talk with them about when it was appropriate to talk about the Holocaust, and when it might be appropriate to run the K. I suspect it didn't get through to all of them, but it did challenge some of my students to think about that larger issue and I believe they actually gained something from learning a kritik that isn't specific to the any resolution.

Ultimately, you're exactly right to say that Ks are an individual judge thing, but I wonder if there isn't some value to keeping them around as a lesser argument. I don't want to hear Nietzsche every round, but I think there may be a more topic-specific (or round-specific) space for them to permanently hold.

I promoted this to entry caliber for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m on board with the argument on torture warrants, because it is not particularly unfair nor unresolutional. I would accept this (argued well) as a legitimate position. To be honest, even though it’s obviously a critique of debating torture, I don’t think I would be considering it as such in the round, as much as I would be considering it a reasonable argument about the subject. I tend not to think in academic terms; don’t wrestle me to the ground to explain the difference between tonalism and impressionism, for instance. I know it when I see it, but I’m not thinking about it. Half of what today is referred to as theory debate used to be called definitional debate: same arguments, different label. The same muck that attended the one today attends the other. So it goes.

I am coincidentally curious about the Holocaust, or any extreme debating. Around here such is almost completely unheard of except at the rankest amateur levels, i.e., novice meetings, where the offending soul who brings up Hitler or the like is figuratively thrown out the window after we explain why that level of analysis is counter-productive. Are we just lucky around here?

Anyhow, in agreement with the comment, I wish there were more discussion of what is and isn’t valuable in critiquing a resolution. So much of what we do is soooooo vague. And I have often come out against the idea that judges can maintain wildly different views of the activity just because they don’t want to subscribe to an accepted orthodoxy. I’m not sure whether we have an accepted orthodoxy or not (although I know we have rules, and some judges and debaters are perfectly willing to flout them, which is a different business altogether).

The other thing is, how much critiquing is really going on in policy anyhow? I have no idea.