Kritik

In Policy Debate, a kritik (pronounced critique and often abbreviated K) is generally a type of argument that challenges a certain mindset, assumption, or discursive element that exists within the advocacy of the opposing team. A kritik can either be deployed by the negative team to challenge the affirmative advocacy or by the affirmative team to indict the status quo or the negative advocacy. Kritiks, (and their odd germanic spelling) were developed by Bill Shanahan's teams at University of Texas in the late 1980's out of an existing "single-citizen" argumentation paradigm which called for the judge to vote a single citizen's conscience rather than adopting the role of the federal government. The Shanahan kritik is more a decision calculus than the kritiks which emerged on the college circuit in the early 1990's on the nature of language's intrinsic ambiguity.

Kritiks generally consist of a link, an implication, and an alternative. A link explains why the particular kritik applies to the opposing team. The implication explains the consequences of the kritik and shows why it has competitive importance as well. The alternative provides an alternate advocacy to compare to the other side; however, this has often become simply "reject the affirmative". Unlike disadvantages, kritiks are not necessarily unique -- that is to say that whatever is being criticized can be present in the status quo (i.e., one might argue that a plan will further entrench the mindset of [whatever is being kritiked]).

If proposed policy action was for the United States to send humanitarian assistance to Africa, a possible critical argument would be a kritik of Statism. The link would be that the affirmative uses the centralized state in their plan, and the implication is that the centralized state is bad for x reasons and should therefore be rejected. The negative might call for the rejection of state action without concretely proposing another social system or they may explain another type of social organization that should be used instead of the contemporary state.

Examples of kritiks may include indicts of racism, militarism, patriarchy, biopower, empire, normativity, terror talk, and genocide trivialization. Some kritiks may be presented in their entirety by a single author while other kritik presentations may use various different authors that cross-reference each other's arguments. Popular kritik authors include Michel Foucault, Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Lacan, Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt, and Thomas Szasz.

The validity of kritiks in Policy Debate is not universally accepted. Some arguments which indict their validity include:

De-empahsis on topic related research. In a 1996 Rostrum article G. William Bennett states: "Kritiks discourage research on the topic, decrease the variety of cases and attacks, and substitute in their place an increased emphasis on deconstructing ideas and language."
Reduced pedagogical value of debate. Bennett continues: "The constructive and more encompassing nature of policy clash increases the discussion of multiple ideas and is more educationally worthwhile."
Unfair burden on judges to decide appropriateness of affirmative policy plan. Kritiks attempt to show flaws in affirmative logic but they don't always provide an alternative, but there is no reason to reject the plan when the alternative is unknown. How can a judge evaluate a plan without knowing what is being voted on if the plan is rejected?
Kritiks trivialize policy debate's traditional focus. No longer is policy comparison and problem solution the focus.
Some find particular kritiks uncomfortable or difficult to visualize because of their radical nature.
Some kritiks constitute a bastardization or trivialization of the philosophies of authors cited.

Supporters of kritik argumentation suggest that none of these indictments are unique to kritiks, meaning that they apply to the traditional debate arguments as well, and that a kritik is just another argument which must be researched and prepared for. They also point out the specificity of many kritiks in relation to policy comparison and implementation (such as Foucault's contributions to our understanding of mental health care or Agamben's relevant contributions to civil liberties). Many of those that believe in the validity of kritik argumentation also argue that because many kritiks indict particularly bad assumptions that the other team has made, there is often no need for an alternative to the other team's offending advocacy. For instance, if negative has proven that aff's 1AC is racist, then why does the neg need any alternative beyond 'don't advocate racism,' or 'reject racist assumptions'?

In general, kritiks have been universally accepted in National Circuit (Tournament of Champions) debate and most inter-collegiate policy debate, and less accepted in particular regions of National Forensic League debate, especially by "lay" judges. Their increase in popularity is due to the ease with which the arguement is run. Regardless of the affirmative being read, a team may run the same kritik all year. Also, because of the limited time in a debate, it is easy to dodge the fact that one has little to no understanding of the kritik outside of being able to repeat words in it.

References

Caldwell, Janice. (2001). Answering Critiques. Rostrum. Retrieved December 30, 2005.
Cheshire, David. (2002). Defending Pragmatism as an Alternative to some Critiques. Rostrum. Retrieved December 30, 2005.
Glass, David. (2002). Post Modern Critiques in the Policy Debate Statagem. Rostrum. Retrieved December 31, 2005.
Heidt, Jenny. (2001). Performance Debates: How to Defend Yourself. Rostrum. Retrieved December 30, 2005.
Schwartzman, Ray. (2001). Postmodernism and the Practice of Debate. Rostrum. Retrieved December 30, 2005.

External links