In accepting certain premises about the function of the representational critique, the debate community has become something of a deliberative enclave. Terms like “severance” and ideas about the one-to-one impact ratio of “discourse” to “policy” are bandied about with little critical reflection about its meaning for policy-making. This post is an attempt to examine the theory and practice of the Reps K, demonstrate shortcomings in its logic, and introduce the method of “judge choice” as a remedy.
First – let me define what I mean by “representational critique”. By this, I refer to any argument that takes issue with justification for action that is not necessarily tied to outcome of action. This can become blurred, so let me give an example. If a team reads a Disarm plan with two advantages: proliferation and environmental destruction (with a species loss = human extinction impact), and the Neg team critiques Apocalyptic depictions of the environment, that is a Reps K.
Why? Because the Aff team justified the plan by using apocalypticism – but such terminology is not necessarily an outcome of Disarmament. The same plan could be justified solely because of the prolif advantage – or for many other potential reasons.
On the other hand, if a Neg team said “Arms control is bad because it consolidates U.S. security and preserves capitalism”, that is a critique of outcome. Disarming necessarily causes (albeit indirectly) capitalism.
Now, as a student of rhetoric (MA in Comm., WFU, 2008), I find it nearly impossible to say that justifications for acting do not matter. Evidence, such as that commonly read from Doty or other rhetoricians/philosophers, makes a very persuasive case that representation shapes both implementation and reaction to the plan. To set the record straight, I agree with this genre of argument nearly 100%.
However, to say that representations matter—insofar as they determine/influence policy outcomes—says little or nothing about which justifications should be used for policymaking. The representations presented by the 1AC that are justifications for action, instead of outcomes of the plan are neither *mandatory* nor *inevitable* outcomes of voting Aff.
Thus, the judge, at the end of the debate, should be able to choose (for themselves) why to vote Aff or Neg. Logically, one can choose the best arguments from the set of available reasons presented in the debate. Not every 1AC justification needs to be part of the final “package” of voting Aff. If one or more representations for voting for the plan is undesirable, they should not be used. If, at the end of the debate, positive/beneficial justifications for acting remain, the plan is desirable and the Aff should win.
In nearly every “Reps debate” that I have seen, the Neg has implicitly indicted the above method by using the language of “severance”. The judging community, unfortunately, has imported the logic of counterplan competition and ascribed to the dogma that every representation forwarded by the 1AC must be featured in a final evaluation of the plan – with little attendant reasoning for why this must be the case.
In my opinion, importing the theory of CP competition into these debates is a clear misapplication of the term. “Severance” implies an initial attachment—that the plan initially required that certain justifications be used for acting. In other words, the Neg assumes that the Aff had said that voting for the plan mandates that certain representations be used.
This is false. As the above example about Disarm and Environmental Rhetoric demonstrates, justifications for action are frequently disconnected from outcome. Banning the bomb may affect the environment, but it doesn’t dictate how we choose to speak about/represent ecology. In this way, representations are different than, say, a policy advantage to the plan. Banning the bomb may necessarily stop proliferation. Then, “prolif good” would be an inescapable disadvantage of the plan.
The outcome/justification distinction is highly important. If the Neg straight impact-turns the prolif advantage, there’s nothing to concede to “sever” the link to the advantage. If the Neg only says “Prolif representations are racist” with no reason that the *plan* causes such depictions (only a link about how the Aff team used them), the impact is much more uncertain. Commonly, judges assess an impact to the Reps K (“How bad are those justfications?”) and then weighs that against the case. This is a fundamental logical error. If a certain set of justifications is flawed, then the judge should simply not use them, not *require* the Aff to use them and assess it a value similar to the plan’s outcomes – an entirely different category of argument.
Why? Because the judge is a dynamic thinker, like any engaged decision-maker. At a town hall meeting, if a speaker proposed a policy for three reasons, two of which were excellent and one was crap, you *should* agree with their proposal for the two good reasons and ignore the third. Good ideas are good if they have beneficial outcomes, regardless of how they are justified.
Interestingly, the contrary position—that you should hold speakers to every reason they cite as justification and use it to assess their policy—is one of the most reactionary and anti-critical stances one could take. It prioritizes who speaks over what is spoken about. It ignores content for form. It punishes instead of compromises. And, fundamentally, it is a tactic used by conservative political forces to crush progressivism. Do the critique folk really want to be in this company?
The debate judge should be treated like an intelligent and dynamic policy-maker. The affirmative should forward a proposal with a set of justifications. The Neg can criticize (via DAs, a counterplan, a K, etc.) the plan or the justifications. If the Neg wins that the plan is a bad idea, they win. If the Neg wins that the justification is bad, then the judge should reject that justification and determine whether the plan is a good idea for any other potential reason.
There isn’t “no cost” to presenting poor justifications for action on the Aff. In all likelihood, you’d lose your entire advantage. The disarm aff that spots the Environment Reps K would no longer be able to claim the environment advantage as a reason for acting. The K still has value—but it’s meaning changes to a “reason not to use such representation” instead of a DA to the plan. If the Aff *only* had an environment advantage, the K would be a reason to vote Neg on presumption. The Reps K isn’t a DA to the plan. It can never be “Environmental Reps cause extinction – outweighs the case”, because the conclusion of that statement is that those justifications should never be used for acting in the first place. Translation: “No Link, Judge”.
Finally, what about the Doty card and other “reps matter” style arguments that I mentioned before? Well, representations matter—but those arguments presume that the reps actually used influence policy. My position is that the judge can choose which representations to use for policy enactment, so Doty et al. applies to the 1AC but not the final position chosen by the judge that is a reason to vote Aff because it affirms the plan.
In the end: let the judge choose. It’s a far more coherent model of decision-making.
Published in: Kritik
Comments
PJ --
Good point, I should have addressed this in my original post.
For the sake of clarity, three points:
1. Importing the language of "straight turn" unnecessarily confuses the subject. It implies that there existed a prior mandatory link between voting Aff and the representation -- which I posit does not exist.
2. Saying "speaking the representation of Environmental Apocalypse has nefarious effect" is a reason why a logical judge should not use that as a reason for acting and instead pick a justification that has not been indicted (and vote Aff) or decide that there is no legitimiate justification (and vote Neg on presumption). To say "You said X, that's bad, VI", feels like a tactic of wild conservativism (see above comment). I can explain more if this argument seems unclear -- this is my first time putting this idea in writing.
3. Its not scott free. The impact of a Reps K, if won by the Neg, is that the Aff "loses" the justification for the plan. Its an absolute take-out to the advantage -- it no longer is a legitimate reason to vote Aff. That's not scott free. Its not "auto-vote Neg" -- but winning many other arguments doesn't mean the Neg snap-wins either.
A few points:
First I think debate is impovershed in terms of having a vocabulary to describe critiques that seem representational but are actually oddly about the "effects of the plan. Imagine the following circumstance: a security critique which argues that focusing on "major nuclear exchange" ignores structural violence present within the international system. Here I am with you: if the judge is able to vote affirmative for some other impact that is not a major nuclear war, the judge is not making an unethical decision, i.e. they are not prioritizing the impact which the negative critique has argued ought not to be prioritized. The idea is that the chosen reason for adoption is not an impact that ought to be prioritized. This is how Wayne won all those Zizek debates--on "capitalism" is a bigger impact than all others and your choice of other impacts presents an opportunity cost with critiquing capitalism. I think the IR K mostly works this way too--its a critique of impact prioritization, not of "representation" so to speak. Critiques of impact prioritization are well explained by your arguments here.
Plus, I think the negative generally ought to read evidence about what the debate in Congress would be framed like--odds are some Senator would talk about how India can't be trsuted with nukes, or might take the opportunity to bash the red Chinese. Then you can have a uniqueness debate about that, one that probably favors the aff.
Second- what if the negative argument is more aggressive. Imagine the Mutimer K framed in the following way: saying that developing nations can't be trusted to handle nuclear weapons is racist--racism ought to be rejected. In this instance the reason the judge votes aff could be some other impact--lets say international cooperation solves warming or something. But this does not mean that what the Aff has said is any more defensible--it was a bad thing to say! Its easy enough to be middle of the road on reps questions when the impact is just like "this representation is a lie" but its another thing entirely when the impact to the critique is something ethical. Most of the time the aff won't win reps don't matter--they'll just win that a representation doesn't entirely determine the result of a policy, and that it doesn't implicate the affs ability to solve other advantages. But usually the negative wins something like "words matter" and "what people say in the debate should matter". I feel like in this circumstance we may remain in our separate democratic framework enclaves.
In the above example, though, the punishment does not seem to fit the crime: the negative has won that the aff did a bad thing, but the punishment is merely they lose the advantage? I feel like maybe the neg should get to way the "speech act offense" against the case advantages. Which sounds weird, but maybe it isnt.
Paul + Scott --
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like you're both saying the same thing: representational critique should have some value--the judge shouldn't be able to wish it away.
Well, I'm asking "why?". It seems almost dogmatic for many: the Reps K is a DA to the Aff -- their discourse does something bad, and you "weigh" that against them. The problem is, this model doesn't make any sense.
a) The link is possible - not mandatory. CTBT can be affirmed for reasons entirely independent of proliferation, for example.
b) Winning that a representation shouldn't be used doesn't make it a DA. It makes it a reason not to use that justification. Insert town hall meeting / logical decision-making analogy here.
c) Am I wrong to say that a lot of the "Reps K = VI, can't let them get away with it" sentiment hinges on a model that requires punishment? It feels like "eye-for-an-eye" -- a style of analysis that quickly lends itself to reactionary conservativism - which I mentioned earlier.
Quick specific reply to Scott --
a) There is a substantial benefit to winning the prolif K - it takes-out the entirety of the 1AC advantage.
b) Its possible that Judge Choice wouldn't avoid the link - if, say, a PJ-style argument about the *inevitability* of prolif discourse surrounding the CTBT was used.
c) Its not right to *assume* that the impact of the K is like a DA. If you spent 8+ minutes beating down inherency, you wouldnt complain when the judge assessed that the impact was that the probability that the status quo solved was high. Not every argument in the Negative's arsenal is a snap-win. As judges, we have to think critically about *why* arguments matter -- instead of just assuming they do.
Casey, I don't undestand your responses/know if you even answered my question, let me rephrase:
1. 1AC reads 1 advantage
2. 1NC reads 1 off reps k of that advantage
3. 2AC reads a 20 second add on
4. In your model, the 2AC may now drop the K because it is irrelevant
yes/no?
Scott --
I don't want to say "yes" or "no" because some of the language you used, like "drop" is loaded.
But, for simplicity sake, it is the case that the K then would not be a reason to vote Neg - the judge could choose to do the plan without any justification/reference to prolif.
Still,
a) Its not irrelevant - the Prolif K has value equal to a 100% case take-out. The Aff is left with only an add-on
b) The Neg could still win a link to the plan - as PJ suggested
c) This method is no different than what judges do when deciding what "decision value" other arguments have.
I think I understand your argument better now. But it seems to me that it essentiall is the claim that the neg should not be able to bracket off a singular advantage and win a reps K vs that advantage alone when the aff has presented other justifications for their plan- that they must weigh the K of an advantage vs the impacts to the other advantage in an outcomes framework seems reasonable(its just plan focus). I guess I don't understand the leap you make to the judge can independently decide to exclude entirely from consideration an advantage on their own and vote for the plan for just 1 of the 2 reasons presented. Could you elaborate on this.
Town Hall meeting:
Tom Collins stands up and says, "The U.S. should adopt NFU to China, it would stop war and build relations which stop global warming".
Mai Tai responds "Warming science relies on positivist understandings of science, makes extinction inevitable".
You are there, and at least somewhat engaged. Do you believe that, to accept the statement that NFU is desirable, you would have to agree to *every* justification forwarded by Collins?
In Judge Choice, evaluation of the Reps K is far more like every other argument. The judge evaluates the critique and decides whether it is beneficial to use the criticized justification or not.
However, the presumption is not that every K is automatically a reason to vote Neg -- or something to be "weighed" against positive representations. Why? Because the judge can choose and the link to the K is potential, not mandatory. NFU can be affirmed for a number of reasons. Many don't require a discussion of warming. If so, there's no link -- and nothing to "weigh".
Why should the judge be assumed to be dynamic and "choosing"? Because they are (logically). Everyone is. Its silly to assume that every 1AC representation is an intrinsic part of voting Aff -- its clearly not.
This argument is different than how the Reps K is normally debated and its my first time putting it down in writing -- so if this still isn't clear, let me know and I'll try again.
Scott,
I could be speaking for Casey incorrectly here, but to answer your question, yes. Casey is saying that Reps Ks are mostly big fat “impact takeouts.” If the negative read 8 minutes worth of one impact takeout in the 1nc, then the 2ac could read a 20 second add-on and ignore the impact takeout. The way you have phrased your question makes Casey’s stance seem ridiculous because the community values off-case arguments. It will be difficult for people to buy into a view of debate that makes it simple for affirmative’s to wish away off-case arguments. However, the point of Casey’s view really is just that: Reps Ks are equivalent to impact take out in terms of their strategic value in debate – they might be a more well-developed or sophisticated impact takeout, but that’s all they are.
--Gstein
Representational critiques are NOT merely impact takeouts. Certainly, there are some critiques where the only impact is "impact is a lie, juhdge!". However, we can think of a numbers of critiques that are actually criticisms of the speech act produced by the debaters. Take the Mutimer example--he's making an argument about how the language we use to talk about other countries getting nuclear weapons contains an implicit racism. Racism is not just a takeout- it is an impact in and of itself!
Thus in the situation where we have a town hall, and Tom Jones says "We need a No First Use policy because it will boost our soft power, and cause we can't trust developing nations with nuclear weapons" we are in a bind. Tom's advocacy might stop a global war, but his speech act has also produced language worthy of sanction. Now, in a Town Hall, we might just vote for the proposal and grumble under our breath about how that Tom Jones is a racist bastard. Are debates like this? Are we to just vote for a certain proposal even if something bad was done? Debate is not a simple referendum on the PLAN-- it is always a vote on the quality of competing speech acts.
One might be tempted to say: You can vote for the thing without endorsing the racist speech act. The impact calculus on this question is clear, however: objectionable acts part of oftentimes structural/systemic violence (proliferation rhetoric is a natural/neutral way of saying racist things) often avoid sanction because their use overall can still be packaged with a "good" policy.
My point is just that the impact should still be weighed. If racism is a worse thing than nuclear war, and indeed, if language/representations matter, and matter ethically, then we are instructed by the rubrics of many critiques not to "look the other way" when presented with objectionable speech acts. Voting aff while continuing to grumble about structural racism is not enough- make the aff win that stopping global conflict is more important than combating the kind of racism found in speech acts about proliferation. Because the judge is making a decision at the end of the day whether the language used by the affirmative is so bad that it merits the judge rejecting a policy that is a good idea.
Unless your committment to the idea that representations matter is more than lip service, I am not sure how you can claim a sensitivity to representational critiques while also saying that bad things being said should be ignored in the face of a policy decision. The only argument you could make is that debate ought to be a safe non-political space, where ideas are tested and civic responsibilities constructed, and it needs to be pre-political. There our positions may find an irresolvable stasis point.
And to react to this passage:
"Interestingly, the contrary position—that you should hold speakers to every reason they cite as justification and use it to assess their policy—is one of the most reactionary and anti-critical stances one could take. It prioritizes who speaks over what is spoken about. It ignores content for form. It punishes instead of compromises. And, fundamentally, it is a tactic used by conservative political forces to crush progressivism. Do the critique folk really want to be in this company?"
You are enacting three parallel separations that do not hold up under scrutiny:
who vs. what presumes that identity is separate from the rhetoric used to describe a circumstance or situation. But we often find that such a separation falls apart--for example, we cannot begin to talk about who Americans are until we talk about who they are not, even though we find that there is no "real" non-discursive originary point for such a distinction.
content over form- you are regarding racism as "form" and neutralizing content as an objective given in the world. Turning racism into a neutral/natural fact creates two debilitating problems
A) it constitutes racism as an inevitable fact- this lends one to pursue political strategies that attempt to corral it instead of endorsing a form of politics which tries to PERFORM (via speech acts) without racism.
B) It presumes that racism is not done by human agents- but structures/natural existences/neutral political categories are human created- your viewpoint eviscerates responsibility.
Finally, punishment vs compromise. How to resolve this speaks to the judge's own impact calculus. If the affirmative wins "link defense" to the critique voting aff can be viewed as a compromise. If the negative wins the argument, then most likely the judge will not view a compromise option as even possible- they will say something along the lines of "this bad thing you said outweighs the good thing your plan does". So in this case, we should let the debaters resolve these artificial distinctions through debate particulars.
So its not really a conservative political strategy. The model of deliberation you propose, actually, where a neutral content out in the world is assumed to exist, is the most appropriate position for a political conservative. Roland Barthes persuasively makes this case near the end of Mythologies. That which has always existed will exact more persuasive force owing to how the passage of time reinforces the status quo. "Natural" reality is such an effective category of neutrality.
Paul --
This view of debate does not say Reps Ks are impact takeouts... just that they are only as valuable (strategically).
Even if you are correct, that a prolif advantage may use racist prolif language, a judge could chose to reject that prolif advantage and vote affirmative because the plan is still a good idea for another reason. Since you have not made an argument that the plan causes racism, it’s not really a relevant consideration. Voting against the affirmative for using racist prolif language would justify judges voting against teams that wore offensive ties. The debate is about the plan’s merits, not how it is presented or who presents it.
I’m sorry buddy, the Reps K is dead.
Gstein,
The problem is that when the judge chooses to reject that language the reason for rejection is because that language is objectionable i.e. unethical. That admits that there is some merit to the racism argument. But by not sanctioning the production of that discourse, the judge tacitly judges that the aff impact arguments are more important than the impact to the K. I do think the aff has to win that their impact outweighs the racism impact. In your view, if they do not, then you are excepting the space of debate from political critique, and should be prepared to defend the idea that people ought not be responsible for their discourse. Which is why yours would be a radically conservative framework, for good or ill.
It is more than a takeout. It both says that what the aff says is not TRUE, and also says that what the aff said is ethically objectionable. Thats offense! And that offense doesn't vanish if the judge ONLY votes on some other advantage- the impact stems from the words being said, not the judge's RFD. To the extent the RFD does matter, its because the judge choose an aff impact to be more important than the impact to the K.
Gstein/Casey-
So this is simply "plan focus good", why use all these other words/terms to obfuscate that- what is the benefit?
As a sidebar, the assumption that debate is/should be a town hall is as politically motivated/strategically biased as saying debate is a conference about word choice. Obviously in that setting you could still vote for NFU. In debate it is not someone else who said something stupid and was then corrected by another person, it is the aff who said something dumb. If 90 percent of what you say is dumb, it is certainly possible you have not done the better debating. The ballot says "who did better debating" not "result of town hall is.."
Scott --
Its not "plan focus good". Even assuming that representations are incredibly important, its an arguments about *what* representations should be evaluated when deciding to vote Aff or Neg.
I also don't think its as simple as saying that the Reps K is "just an impact takeout". They're more -- but the question is what *decision value* they should have.
I have to teach in 20 minutes -- so I'm going to have to hold off on writing a longer reply.
More later,
Ananda
I'm working on a (supportive) response piece to this article but I want to ask a question first—this is aimed primarily at those that are criticizing Casey's "judge choice" argument.
What does "weighing" mean in the context of representation critiques? I think the easiest way to explain what I'm asking is with an example:
1AC: Ratify CTBT - solves prolif, solves soft power.
1NC: Prolif Reps K.
At the end of the debate, the affirmative wins that the Senate should ratify the CTBT because doing so would shore up U.S. soft power (this is agreed to be a good thing, for argument's sake). The negative, however, wins that representing proliferation in the way that the affirmative did in the 1AC is undesirable (because it is racist/colonialist).
In this hypothetical, how does the judge "weigh" the desirability of Senate ratification of CTBT against the undesirability of the affirmative's representations of proliferation?
It seems like these arguments are incommensurable because they begin from different assumptions about the role/position of the decision-maker, so I am having trouble conceptualizing what Casey's critics mean when they call for the "weighing" of the reps K.
Thoughts?
I agree the "weigh both" solution seems somewhat illogical. It is mainly a concession to the weigh frameork debates happen--the negative tends to have better evidence that language matters, but the aff tends to have advantages that the representational K doesn't handle very well.
Debaters tend to to be happy with some concessionary position, like "well you get your K but we get to weigh our other advantages!" This is illogical because you are right-- the aff impact assumes the plan passes, while the neg impact is focused on in-round discourse.
My read is that this occurs because of a clash between debate "theory" i.e. we remain committed to the fact that we should imagine that plans are done (there is a good body of literature that says such a practice is important to mainstreaming critical insights), yet we also can't deny an awful lot of excellent negative evidence (and I've judged my share of K debates, so I'll committ to my judgment here) that says representations matter an awful lot and probably can't be ignored.
I think the situation results from an unwillingness on the part of both debaters and judges to really make a statement about what was won in the debate. Rare indeed is the judge who says "representations don't matter AT ALL" or "the result of the plan does not matter AT ALL". So we just imagine that both worlds exist. Its an awkward compromise, but the alternatives are to not count reps K's at all and risk authorizing bad forms of violence, or to ignore the plan and impoversh policy analysis.
Quick aside (I know I owe you a post, PJ/Scott, but that will have to be later):
An important, and hopefully less controversial, part of my argument is that the language used to describe the representational critique needs to change. It is time for the way we speak and teach the Reps K to evolve – for the sake of clarity and to introduce an element of terminological precision that is badly needed in debates that differ substantially from those about counterplans, etc.
As I mentioned above, the language of “severance” is a close-but-not-quite import that makes every discussion of the representational critique worse. Given the near consensus against plan-severance (taken from CP debates, then migrated to the K), the term has shut down critical reflection about the process of decision and created illusions about the burdens of affirmation that have an underdeveloped theoretical basis. I don’t have, as of yet, an alternative term, but I am open to suggestions.
Likewise, using “impact” to describe the claim that “Positivist notions of warming cause extinction” unnecessarily conflates the idea with the “impact” to the case. This should be replaced with a discussion of “decision value” – that is, an argument about what criteria/rubric should be used for determining who won the debate.
I have no illusions that the Reps K fold will suddenly throw up their arms and abandon their style of argument. In the interim though, making changes to the language we use to debate these arguments could be a highly useful middle-ground and enhance the clarity of discussion by both sides.
If the critique is Aff Inclusive its abundantly clear this is just the same boring plan focus stuff with a new name.
Obviously if debate is about finding the best plan this "judge choice" stuff logically follows. But this isn't new, its wrong forum stuff with a new name.
Scott already said that, so yea
Greenstein is right, Rep K's are pretty dead. As a result, K debating is currently painfully boring and terrible. Everyone basiclly has to run Impact turn K's (Nietzsche) or boring K's (Cap K's so you can get to big impacts). I don't if anyone else really like watching this, but Christ its starting to get old.
Its especially problematic because the interesting K literature on most topics seems to be oriented around a discoursive/Reps Focus.
It is odd that people are pretty okay with CP's that provide little actual clash (think NPR CP this year or the offset CP on the subsidies topic) but the idea of the Negative PIKing out of an advantage seems abusive.
Kade --
I don't think it's the same as "plan focus". Regardless of the focus of the debate, the judge can choose (thus, distinguishing my argument from "plan focus, Judge"). Representations matter -- they determine policy outcomes, etc. The question, though, is *which* representations matter. Which representations have "decision value". Not every argument presented in the 1AC does. Many have no mandatory link to the plan / affirmation. They are merely potential.
No one has said anything about aff inclusivity or representational critique being unfair. The issue is just that it doesn't make all that much sense.
Last, a question for you, which may be unrelated to anything that has been talked about in the post or comments. According to your conception of the role of the ballot (does it have a name? sorry), is the plan considered to have any different value than anything else that is said in the debate -- "Contention One", "He said..", "environmental collapse causes extinction", etc.? Or, is it all the same: "just words"?
It seems plan focus to me becaue the premise of your argument starts from the assumption that the Judge is at a "town hall" or "in congress" and is picking the best thing to enact. If I was voting in Congress, I would never vote on a Rep K. If someone made a bunch of smart and reasonable claims to support a bill but then someone else made some sexist/absurd justifications for a bill, I would probably still vote for the bill.
All this presuposes that my role when judging is to vote for a bill. Sure, I can chose, but I am choosing the the justification for a plan.
Why couldn't the model be electing a candidate? For example, I might like candidate A's policy proposals more than Candidate B's. Candidate A, however, might have made a bunch of racist statements. As a result, I decide I should not endorse Candidate A even though I think his policy proposals might be better because Racism should be a "decision rule". I do not think this line of thinking is irrational. It might privlege a persons rhetoric over their proposal, but there are rational arguments for this e.g. all those Reps prior cards.
The AIK example is an even easier choice. Two candidates agree on major policy proposals. One uses racist justifications, the other doesn't, who do you vote for?
The plan is the policy proposal the affirmative supports the enactment of. That doesn't mean its necessaril the most important thing in the debate.
I do think there are obviously a number of ways to Make Rep K's more policy relevant. For example, The Neg can both say A. Hegemony is Colonial/Kills a bunch of People and B. Their Claims that Hegemony is stabilizing is based on flawed assumptions. Same With the Prolif K and Others.
However, I do this it kinda sucks that if a K team wants to actually debate the secifics of the affs advantages, they have to impact turn/take out all of them. Whereas as team running a policy strategy can just run CP's and then impact turn an advantage/go for a DA.
Cross-post (from cross-x.com). Addresses some of Kade's thoughts:
Regardless of how you view debate (group discussion, rhetorical evaluation, town hall meeting, role-playing of Congressional debate, or else), considering what criteria for evaluation should be used is essential. In Judge Choice, the 1AC does not end the debate. This has a logical basis: regardless of form of debate, there is a difference (or should be - later post) between statement and advocacy. Many representations are statements -- that never had a mandatory connection to advocacy. Some justifications DO have a mandatory link. Batterman's post on the3nr.com provides some useful development here--either there must be *at least some* consideration of advocacy or a defense of punishment as an appropriate response to representational harm.
The examples about orientalism and sexist language are all backwards. Imagine Batterman's example: a team states that the US should not send troops to Iraq. Would you, as a decider (citizen, individual, legislator, whatever), look a soldier in the face and say "Well, the idea is no good -- Iraq is a quagmire where you face a decent chance of dying for a rotten cause -- BUT the person advocating the idea was such a jerk that I had to vote against them, so off you go!"?
The idea that we should set aside ideas to focus on form, or to say that good "advocacy" should not be affirmed because it was done in a poor manner, is profoundly regressive.
You might ask: "Well, this seems chicken-egg. Why do we choose content over form, when one necessarily forgoes the other?" That -- and your statement that the judge would "just ignore what happened in the 1AC" misses the point. Judge Choice is fundamentally about ACKNOWLEDGING representational error -- not ignoring it. The remedy, though, is to *reject such representations*. Do not use them as justification. Ever. Because they are bankrupt. Sexism is wrong. Orientalism is wrong. They should never used a reasoning to adopt an idea. The judge can choose that. You have *no reason* (other than "punish" - which links to the "regression DA" above) for connecting this with a snap-win for the Neg.
Kade --
Candidate Election is a rhetorical trick. Clearly, when deciding who to elect, deciders should evaluate their "overall package" of attributes -- because, well, you never know what legislation/decisions they will be confronted with.
Clearly, Judge Choice relies on the premise that there is some advocacy to the Aff speech. Then, the argument that "advocacy should precede *every justification*" kicks in. If you think the plan is no different than any other word in the 1AC, that's another discussion. But, the argument still isn't "plan focus" -- most alternative frameworks still give some role to the plan -- and with Judge Choice, the criteria for evaluation are substantially different than if the Aff were held to every representation/justification stated in the 1AC.
As a side note, in the context of a town hall debate, it seems the terminal impacts of
1) truth and 2) democracy serve as trump cards.
Not sure which is more important or if procedural or substantive democracy is more important. Fairness and freedom get honorable mentions.
Cross post from cross-x.com thread:
http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=994840
with minor modifications
You [ie Casey, Gsten, advocates of Judge Choice] say, the judge is basically a Senator, having a policy (the plan) debated out in front of him on the floor of the Senate, and then casting his role-call vote for or against the plan. That role of the ballot is actually a warrant for the justifications of the aff not being severable (diction intentional, this is a defense of using that particular term from CPs):
The 1ac is the proposal of the plan, along with a story about why the plan is a good idea (inherency, harms/advantages, solvency). Of course the text of the plan is not what would be enacted in the Senate: there would be lots of specific language to portions of other relevant bills, and there would be lots of meaningless scripted S's with sections numbers and paragraph letters. Lots of mumbo jumbo.
At the very top of that mumbo jumbo, the Senators proposing the bill actually tell their 1ac, ie their story of why the bill is a good idea. These are the whereas clauses of the bill, and while they are not "enforceable", the courts do look to them to determine legislative intent in enacting the policy, so they definitely shape the way the policy is implemented.
When floor debate on a bill is opened, the entirety of the bill including the whereas clauses is read aloud (although this is often waved by vote of acclamation, since no one wants to actually hear the legislation). So the 1ac is this reading of the text of the bill that opens debate. In which case, the advantages, including the advantage the neg Ks, are codified into the legislation in the whereas clauses. And when a Senator votes Yay/Nay on the passage of the bill, whatever his/her personal intentions or reasons for voting that way, the original justifications of the bill remain in place, except as modified by a particular process (real world: amendment; debate world: negative reads kick-enabling defense).
I'll say it again: when the Senator votes Yay for the reasons that haven't been critiqued, the reason that was critiqued is still part of the legislation, because the whereas clause that specifies it has not been amended out of the bill. So severance actually is the correct term, and the 1ac justifications actually aren't severable.
I'm going to write a new post soon to further explain Judge Choice and respond to some of the criticisms, but in there interim:
1. I don't know why people have taken such issue with examples related to Town Hall meetings. No part of Judge Choice requires that debate must be modelled like a town hall. It was an *example* -- not a mandate (sense a theme here?). The basic idea that a bad justification does not produce a bad outcome can be true if the judge is a rhetorical critic, activist, or just an "average individual".
2. Scu - I believe that "symbolic battles" are included in Judge Choice. Taking your example, if voting for health care increased Nazi legitimacy which is worse than the cost of forgoing health care reform, the plan should not be done. That's an outcome-based argument - otherwise known as a DA. Which, obviously, is all good.
3. None of this is meant to be dumping on Ks generally. Theory should be discussed to improve the way that they are debated -- not to "ban" them or any such nonsense.
Casey said
1. I don't know why people have taken such issue with examples related to Town Hall meetings. No part of Judge Choice requires that debate must be modelled like a town hall. It was an *example* -- not a mandate (sense a theme here?). The basic idea that a bad justification does not produce a bad outcome can be true if the judge is a rhetorical critic, activist, or just an "average individual".
You're definitely going to get impact turned here. Aside from the non-representations offense like my whereas argument that even your framework says you have to answer, this is a really good example of why justifications are exceptionally intrinsic to the plan, even when they are advocated as what you call 'possible justifications'. See, your entire line of reasoning was based off of the consequentialist policy-maker like the town hall guy or the senator. (I demonstrate this at the bottom of this post by using a series of quotes from your original article.) To ditch these examples when they get K'ed and then say "but the policy could still work for other reasons" is entirely nonsensical. Even if you can come up with some other tangential advantage to your paradigm, it's entire logic assumes the world represented by the examples you just ditched. Either it is impossible to prove a representation is intrinsic to a plan, in which case your argument makes all reps Ks untenable, or you need to actually defend these examples, since they encapsulate your entire line of reasoning.
The claim about this applying to "judge-as-critic-of-rhetoric" et al doesn't make sense, if for no other reason than that your exposition of the paradigm assumes exclusively a consequentialist policy-maker. IE you thus far lose this claim on presumption, because you haven't warranted it at all. In particular though, the "critic of rhetoric" is laughable, because your paradigm denies that the debaters have engaged in meaningful speech acts.
*** specific link work for consequentialism/policy-making: ***
Paragraph 1 sentence 2 "...little critical reflection about its meaning for policy-making." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 6 sentence 1 "...which justifications should be used for policymaking." [emphasis added, emphasis in original]
Paragraph 7 sentence 4 "If one or more representations for voting for the plan is undesirable, they should not be used." [emphasis added]
Pargraph 8 sentence 2 "...the dogma that every representation forwarded by the 1AC must be featured in a final evaluation of the plan." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 9 sentence 3 "In other words, the Neg assumes that the Aff had said that voting for the plan mandates that certain representations be used." [emphasis added, emphasis in original]
Paragraph 10 sentence 4 (weaker example) "In this way, representations are different than, say, a policy advantage to the plan." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 11 sentence 3 "...no reason that the *plan* causes such depictions..." [emphasis added, *emphasis* in original]
Paragraph 12 sentence 4 "Good ideas are good if they have beneficial outcomes, regardless of how they are justified." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 13 sentence 1 “…that you should hold speakers to every reason they cite as justification and use it to assess their policy…” [emphasis added, emphasis in original]
Paragraph 14 sentence 5 “…the judge should reject that justification and determine whether the plan is a good idea for any other potential reason.” [emphasis added, emphasis in original
Paragraph 15 sentence 6 “The Reps K isn’t a DA to the plan.” [emphasis added]
Paragraph 16 sentence 3 “…the final position chosen by the judge that is a reason to vote Aff because it affirms the plan.” [emphasis added]
That’s an example from every paragraph in the essay, except for 2-5, which are just an explanation of what happens in the “environment and prolif advantages” example debate. So, for every paragraph that advances the reasoning of the argument, I can cite a specific textual example that shows the argument assumes consequentialism and/or policymaking.
The eg for paragraph 10 is more ambiguous, but that's because the paragraph is really talking about what policy advantages are, rather than what representations are/aren't, so again it isn't directly advancing the understanding of the thesis so much as it is a stage-setter.
Casey said
1. I don't know why people have taken such issue with examples related to Town Hall meetings. No part of Judge Choice requires that debate must be modelled like a town hall. It was an *example* -- not a mandate (sense a theme here?). The basic idea that a bad justification does not produce a bad outcome can be true if the judge is a rhetorical critic, activist, or just an "average individual".
You're definitely going to get impact turned here. Aside from the non-representations offense like my whereas argument that even your framework says you have to answer, this is a really good example of why justifications are exceptionally intrinsic to the plan, even when they are advocated as what you call 'possible justifications'. See, your entire line of reasoning was based off of the consequentialist policy-maker like the town hall guy or the senator. (I demonstrate this at the bottom of this post by using a series of quotes from your original article.) To ditch these examples when they get K'ed and then say "but the policy could still work for other reasons" is entirely nonsensical. Even if you can come up with some other tangential advantage to your paradigm, it's entire logic assumes the world represented by the examples you just ditched. Either it is impossible to prove a representation is intrinsic to a plan, in which case your argument makes all reps Ks untenable, or you need to actually defend these examples, since they encapsulate your entire line of reasoning.
The claim about this applying to "judge-as-critic-of-rhetoric" et al doesn't make sense, if for no other reason than that your exposition of the paradigm assumes exclusively a consequentialist policy-maker. IE you thus far lose this claim on presumption, because you haven't warranted it at all. In particular though, the "critic of rhetoric" is laughable, because your paradigm denies that the debaters have engaged in meaningful speech acts.
***
Paragraph 1 sentence 2 "...little critical reflection about its meaning for policy-making." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 6 sentence 1 "...which justifications should be used for policymaking." [emphasis added, emphasis in original]
Paragraph 7 sentence 4 "If one or more representations for voting for the plan is undesirable, they should not be used." [emphasis added]
Pargraph 8 sentence 2 "...the dogma that every representation forwarded by the 1AC must be featured in a final evaluation of the plan." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 9 sentence 3 "In other words, the Neg assumes that the Aff had said that voting for the plan mandates that certain representations be used." [emphasis added, emphasis in original]
Paragraph 10 sentence 4 (weaker example) "In this way, representations are different than, say, a policy advantage to the plan." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 11 sentence 3 "...no reason that the *plan* causes such depictions..." [emphasis added, *emphasis* in original]
Paragraph 12 sentence 4 "Good ideas are good if they have beneficial outcomes, regardless of how they are justified." [emphasis added]
Paragraph 13 sentence 1 “…that you should hold speakers to every reason they cite as justification and use it to assess their policy…” [emphasis added, emphasis in original]
Paragraph 14 sentence 5 “…the judge should reject that justification and determine whether the plan is a good idea for any other potential reason.” [emphasis added, emphasis in original
Paragraph 15 sentence 6 “The Reps K isn’t a DA to the plan.” [emphasis added]
Paragraph 16 sentence 3 “…the final position chosen by the judge that is a reason to vote Aff because it affirms the plan.” [emphasis added]
That’s an example from every paragraph in the essay, except for 2-5, which are just an explanation of what happens in the “environment and prolif advantages” example debate. So, for every paragraph that advances the reasoning of the argument, I can cite a specific textual example that shows the argument assumes consequentialism and/or policymaking.
Faber --
I used the language of plan/policymaking because it most accurately models my experiences with the Reps K -- where the Neg critiqued the justifications of a "policy" Aff.
However, to be clear, I think the Judge Choice model makes as much sense in an alternative conception of the role of the ballot, as well. I believe I explained this above. To say "well, you said plan here, here, and here" and thus the theory cannot be applied in other situations is a logical fallacy -- that it makes sense for A does not mean that it cannot be B.
You explained, but you did not warrant. Even your claim that it could be used in other roles still assumed consequentialism: the argument "...a bad justification does not produce a bad outcome..." assumes that the ballot goes to the team that does the best job of proving outcomes, which is something that gets heavily contested in a great many rounds, and is the definition of consequentialism.
The thesis of your post, as I showed above, can be symbolically repesented as "consequentialist policymaking, therefore judge choice". It provides no warrant for applying judge choice to other situations. (Given A --> B, B =/= C, assuming A --> C is a logical fallacy.) I made this clear when I said "You lose this claim on presumption." Feel free to explain how it would make sense for a judge in those other paradigms, but you as yet have not.
Two quick thoughts:
1. It seems to me that the issue at hand is one of commensurability. For the sake of making this point, I'm going to caricature some of these args into two camps, the Casey camp and the PJ camp:
Casey: voting for the reps K blows off the outcome-based reasons that the plan is good.
PJ: voting for the plan blows off the reasons that the K is meaningful and important.
The problem, I think, is a typical two-ships-passing-in-the-night situation. Both arguments emanate from distinct views about what reasons are important and relevant to a decisionmaker, as well as who the decisionmaker (in this instance, the judge) IS. I'm not convinced that a new judging paradigm is needed so much as a new rhetoric that is able to consider a multiplicity of the aforementioned reasons and to weigh them in the context of one another. Policymakers who are not reflexive about discourse/reps/etc. are bad policymakers and critics of culture who don't consider the nuts and bolts of policy decisions and how those acts influence discourses and rhetorics are largely useless critics.
2. The judge choice paradigm seems largely similar to a plan-focus sort of argument in a framework debate, with the addition of some judge agency as to the disposition of the plan and representation args. I have a knee-jerk reaction of fearing aff conditionality here...
Gonzo
For more on why policy choice ought to matter to critics, Ron Greene has a great blog piece here:
http://moneyspeech.blogspot.com/2009/01/genres-of-moneyspeech-lobbyiing.html
An excerpt:
"The primary tendency of rhetorical studies is to approach public policy as an object of rhetorical concern. Whether public policy is welfare policy, population policy or military policy is of little concern. If it is policy, it is fair game for a rhetorical scholar, especially a scholar that might have found his or her way into rhetorical studies from debate or thinks that public argument is a primary object for rhetorical studies. Occasionally, even political scientists have noted the rhetorical dimensions of public policy because of the importance of communication/argument/rhetoric/frames to such policy dynamics as agenda setting. Yet, except in the area of 1st Amendment scholarship, scholarship that seems rarely raised up as an exemplar of contemporary rhetorical studies, I am at a loss to point to research in rhetorical studies on how public policy regulates the communicative ways in which people are allowed to influence public policy or participate in elections. The lesson of turning our attention to rhetorical genres like lobbying is that they call for a more rigorous policy turn in rhetorical studies than that authorized by the phrase rhetoric of policy."
Gonzo
Question for the field, before I draft a reply:
Why does this "feel" like plan focus? Is it because I used examples involving plans in the original writing? Is it because I distinguish between "outcome" and "justification" -- perhaps implying an outcome to a plan? Because plan focus also renders the decision value of many representational critiques less?
If this hinges on "outcome", then a follow-up: under an alternative conception of the role of the ballot, is there such thing as advocacy? Do words have decision value beyond representation? Does "The USFG should" get evaluated differently than "Contention One: Inherency", however slightly?
I'm not trying to lead the witness here -- so feel free to respond however you like. I'm honestly interested.
Not really a response/reply to Casey/Scott, as much as an elaboration of my thoughts from last night:
1. Yes, I get a plan focus kind of feeling on account of the implications of the theory (as I understand them, perhaps incorrectly) to what is and is not relevant to the decision. This is not to say, however, that I think such an outlook is warrantless. I believe that debate ought to look something more or less like: "the resolution asks a question, the job of the affirmative is to answer it yes, the job of the negative is to demonstrate that the affirmative's answer is incorrect." Now, supposing that the resolution asks the question of "should the USFG substantially reduce and restrict the roles and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal", I think that a reps K that says "not if doing so is rationalized by a particular rhetorical pattern" IS an answer to that question, whereas one that says "particular rhetorical patterns are bad" is NOT. 1
This, of course, raises the question of commensurability I spoke of earlier; I believe that we lack the tools now to effectively consider the implications of a given rhetoric vis-a-vis the outcomes of the policies it helps to produce. I do not mean to say that these represenational critiques are therefore meaningless, just that there seems to be a serious paucity of ways for us to make meaningful comparisons between the impacts of the critique and the plan. I think there are three reasons that this is the case:
1. Debate are too frequently debated and evaluated as all-or-nothing propositions, and not as degrees. Think about advantages and disadvatges - I believe that we generally think of them only as extreme "what if" scenarios. This is to say that we ask ourselves what the outcome of the plan would be if every claim made by the affirmative were to come true in the extreme. The answer: global nuclear holocaust averted. Alternatively, we decide that the plan should be avoided for precisely the same reasons. We very, very rarely use what I would venture are the far more "true" impacts, for instance, that a No First Use policy would be good because it would lower the overall systemic risk of nuclear conflict, not because it would avert a particular conflict. In the face on a particular impending nuclear catastrophe, it's pretty meaningless to suggest that describing it with the wrong words dilutes sovlency in a way that warrants inaction. However, if understood as a policy that is justified on the basis of systemic risk reduction, representation critiques probably matter.
2. The literature doesn't give us any good cards that weighs these sorts of impacts. Like it or not, modern debate is pretty ensnared in the trap of evidence, so much so that we let our cards do a lot more of the arguing than we do ourselves. This runs the risk (reality?) of making us ultimately attached to and limited by the arguments that are advanced in the literatures in which we research. These aren't fields that talk to one another very much, especially given the way that the academy has pretty much rejected generalists in favor of highly specialized and expert researches in any given field. Not only do they not partcularly care what other people are saying, it is probably not in their best interests, career wise, to even bother learning about it very much. The result is that we model the disinterest of academic communities, and have these crises of incommensurability.
3. I'm going to go back to Ron Greene once more:
"The primary tendency of rhetorical studies is to approach public policy as an object of rhetorical concern. Whether public policy is welfare policy, population policy or military policy is of little concern. If it is policy, it is fair game for a rhetorical scholar, especially a scholar that might have found his or her way into rhetorical studies from debate or thinks that public argument is a primary object for rhetorical studies. . . . Yet . . . I am at a loss to point to research in rhetorical studies on how public policy regulates the communicative ways in which people are allowed to influence public policy or participate in elections."
Two things are happening here. First, rhetorical studies (and by extension, most critical literature) takes policies as objects of rhetorical concern, suggesting that they do not necessarily concern themselves explicitly with the end-of-the-line imapcts or implementational nitty-gritty of policy. But a second possibility is suggested by Greene, namely that policy itself and policymakers have a way of framing what counts and acceptable and accessible types of speech and criticism, naturalizing what should be and shouldn't be considered the relevant consequences of plans. Once again, this puts us on a path to developing a set of rhetorics that are very, very bad at communicating with one another.
The answer isn't, I think to say that reps always matter or that they shouldn't matter, but that we need to spend some time thinking of newer and better ways to talk about arguments and to think about arguments, such that we don't wind up excluding entire bodies of literature and research that possess important educational value. In the current modus operendi, we're pretty much forced to pick a side, or to navigate a largely incosistent and incoherent middle ground.
More later,
Gonzo
======
1. It is worth noting that this is not a natural or inevitable way of viewing debate rounds, but the outcome of a debate about debate itself that pre-dates most of us, between hypothesis-testing and policy-making theories of debate. David Glass's commemoration of James J. Unger at http://www.jimunger.org/80Unger.html provides some nice background to the Zarefsky-Unger debate. Also, look for a forthcoming publication from Goodnight and Mitchell that attempts to reopen the question...
Long story short, this argument=
Neg Rep K's can only be advantage Defense. The Neg cannot strategicly punish the affirmative for "chosing" a particular set of Reps. Why is this? The Reps aren't intrinsic to the plan. Ergo, continue plan focus debates if you want to win with a Rep K's.
I still don't get with it shouldn't be offense if the neg rolls up with good ev. on A. This is a decision calc question B. Offensive Disc are more important than consequences etc. (there are cards on this better than doty). Both questions are debateable without wishing them away with theory.
I'm usually hit or miss on aff inclusive K's but "judge choice" seems to make AIK's seem more reasonable than they ought be.
(Ignoring everything before just a response in more general sense)
My view of the affirmative when reading a rep k would be this... The aff deploys very specific examples of why the plan is good, they surely have other advantages, but they chose these specific advantages for this debate round. If this is true everything you do functions off of a discourse that is the round... if this is true then a reps k should be seen as an Impact Takeout (i.e. this isn't apocalyptic in actuality)and Solvency turn (by using this rhetoric you make the green movement fail) if thats the case then the other advantage shouldn't be ignored, and i've never known a round where it would be ignored... its a weighing issue.
Your example fails because if your reading apoc discourse stuff your going to critique both those advantages, and the point is mute.
I run this critique as a PIK and spot it in the 1NC, because it makes more sense in that way.
This game your playing of "policy making" within your post has problems with your explanation.
If we have cards (which good Kritik teams do) that green movement won't latch on to the plan because of the apoc environmental reps then its a clear solvency turn.
I find these kritiks work better against critical teams however, the decision calculus as a judge i would go through is simple. Does the use of that rhetorical strategy affect the outcomes of the plan, and i believe the Blieker arguement is quite compelling on that point that public policy discourse doesn't recognize how language affects those policies.
Iunno i think this is a classic i don't like X arguement post, and its largely irrelevant because the round should always dictate the decision and if it doesn't thats the point you would need to stop judging.
What of the notion that the critique "straight-turns" the representations? That is, the indict of the representations is not just "these are objectionable" but rather is "speaking them had a nefarious effect, even if it does not reach a broader audience". Why, then, does the the affirmative escape from this indict scott free?