The old shell game

Last night at a sparsely attended Sailor’s meeting—our plebes have apparently all gone on shore leave, except for Zip—the Panivore gave a little lecture on theory, at my request. The thing is, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what theory is all about, but if you try to suss it from reading what most people write about it, it’s totally inaccessible. The writers assume you already know what they’re talking about, so it’s all abbreviations and jargon, not to mention just basic incoherent presentation. I’m reminded a little of the old pomo days, where the problem often wasn’t as much the content (although that was a problem) as the presenters’ ability to make sense of the content. There are clear analyses and there are befuddled analyses. The difference between the two does not necessarily mark the understanding of the analyst (although it may), but it sure as hell marks the ability of the analyst to explain it to someone else. If I were to go by most of what I’ve read on theory, with a couple of exceptions, I would have no choice but to dismiss it. There are some good sources aimed primarily at policy—as always, policy was there first—but these fail for me at the point where the substance of the argumentation is policy- rather than values-based.

So the Panivore grabbed the bull by the horns last night and gave us a most clear and understandable breakdown of a theory shell. (Right off the bat, I have to say that the word shell is confusing, in that a shell suggests that the whole case will be inside it, rather than a standalone argument. Which, by the way, is the only thing I knew independently about the subject before Sophie’s lesson, i.e., the definition of the word shell.) By the time she was done, I felt a hell of a lot smarter than when she had begun. I realize that my innate antipathy to theory may have been misplaced. If theory is an attempt to rein in bad argumentation, and it provides the tools to do so, that’s a good thing. There has to be some way of answering arguments that are unanswerable because of their innate abusiveness, and theory seems to be that way. It provides debaters with a structural understanding of what they are doing (complete with nicknames and jargons and abbreviations) that was not a part of the activity a decade ago. Of course, abuse of theory, or at least misuse of theory, will be as rife as abuse/misuse of everything in the activity, at least for a while. If arguments are reasonable and within normative concepts of the rules of LD (which I’ve discussed here at great length in the past), theory doesn’t have a play, although that may not stop a lot of people from tossing it around If arguments are not reasonable and within normative concepts of the rules of LD, on the other hand, then it does.

Of course, the Panivore’s examples were reasonable and introductory ones where theory made sense, hence my acquiescence to the concept. Still, it’s a foot in the door. I do not like being apart from what is going on in LD. And whether I favor something or not is beside the point. If the train is going to Manhattan, my desire to go to Chicago instead should not be so stubborn that I refuse to look at a map of NYC. The train is going to go where the train is going to go. As with the old pomo stuff that is now mostly ashes on the campfire of forensics (now there’s a crappy metaphor), some still survives. Derrida may have retreated into the mists of his original incoherent babblings, but Foucault has become, rightly, canonical. Theory is now enjoying its initial wide explosion. It too will no doubt find its way into the canon. If it actually does have the result, as it claims, of limiting argumentation to educational and fair ends, that would actually be a good thing.

Moral of the story: you learn something every day.

Other moral of the story: if I ever start an institute, I’m making the Panivore top instructor.