Ross:
Jairus, thanks
for agreeing to participate in this dialogue for the Debater's Research
Guide. I think it will prove interesting for us and for our readers.
First of all, congratulations
on the great record of success you and Kirk had this past year, and
on the success of the Greenhill team you helped coach at the TOC.
It seems that a
large measure of that success, and of your enoyment in the debate process
that led to success, was due to your taking a different approach to
debate. Kritiks have been around quite a while now -- we're even at
the stage where folks say "kritiks are just like other arguments".
I'm not sure what they mean by that, but often it is meant that they
are simply solvency attacks, a questioning of the value of an advantage,
or a variant of a disad or counterplan. However, I think your approach(es)
may have been more creative or different. Some have focused on the term
"activism", and "agency" also seems to be an important
term. To begin this dialogue could you describe the approaches you took
on the affirmative and negative in a way that might help us know what
we are talking about?
Jairus:
I think that the
question of activism is a good place to start concerning the approach
to debate that Kirk and I deployed through out the year. In our discussion
of the Middle East and North Korea this year we often framed our plan
in terms of joining a community connected by the advocacy of the particular
political action that was presented in the debate. The idea was that
the ballot or at least the decision by the judge was in itself a political
act one could call activism. As well, we thought that the inclusion
of other forms of expression in our affirmative and negative arguments
such as narratives and song lyrics tested the evaluative process of
debate. In short, why do we vote in debate rounds? Are judges objective
observers or subjective individuals charged with making a decision?
Are debates a question of fact or persuasion? Can what counts as fact
be separated from persuasion and subjectivity? What effect does this
activity have upon us as individuals, as a community? These were all
question we thought had been ignored too often in debates and so we
tried to infuse the decision making process with explicitly political
concerns. We called what we did as debaters, activism.
I think that a
point of confusion that often came up during our debates was what exactly
it was we meant by the term activism. It was often assumed that activism
referred to the traditional conception of organized political protest
that characterized the Civil rights movement or the anti-war protests
of the 1960s, but it did not. That is not to say that what we were talking
about was in exclusion to these forms of activism, but that communities
such as debate that often think of themselves as a free market place
of ideas have significant political content and affect. Our goal on
both the affirmative and negative was to engage the subtle forms of
political participation and action (activism) that are often unidentified
in our community that we call debate. For instance, how do debaters
choose the affirmatives they want to run? Do often to the competitive
constraints of debate, affirmatives that are the most popular with politicians
or more likely the least controversial so as to not link to the Clinton
bad scenario, are chosen. Some may say "so what, we debate about
politically feasible policies." However, at this point in the political
climate of the United States politically feasible often means politically
conservative. We believed that debate was teaching the same kind of
centrist mediocre politics that plays out in our governmental institutions
every day. Debaters seemed more concerned with the risk of political
debate than the effect the presented policies had upon those without
the "political capital" to be heard or considered important.
In most cases, ninety-nine percent of us as debaters and citizens are
left out of the political process. Only a small minority will ever be
directly involved in the Federal government much less becoming the mythical
decision-maker of the entire Federal government. Our goal was to investigate
the form of political participation that we were teaching one another.
From this perspective
of politics, every debate was a form of activism, but the question was
what kind of political impact did the debate have upon the debaters
and audience. Did we teach each other that only the bureaucratic institution
of the federal government could effect change or did we develop new
strategies for altering the status quo with our own political potential?
I think that this is why the discussion of agency came up so often.
Despite the fact that our Post-structuralist approach is often criticized
for destroying agency, we felt that the simulated nature of debate marginalized
our potential for action both during the debate and in our daily lives.
Our goal was to focus on new political possibilities. Kirk and I were
afraid that current styles of debating had so limited the potential
of debate as a site of political action, that it had been reduced to
either a highly reified game or simply a way to inculcate a failing
model of representative democracy.
In a way Kirk
and I have much in common with the early engineers of NDT debate, we
wanted to empower and invigorate an incredible community of individuals.
What we engaged in during debates were often arguments about the structures
of debate and why the affirmative exemplified those structures. Truthfully,
the affirmative or negative arguments being made by the other team were
less important to us then why the arguments were being made both in
terms of form and content. The entirety of this discussion could often
be addressed in the cross-examination period with the question, "why
does the judge vote affirmative." What came out in these discussions
is, I think at the core of this dialogue. Does the affirmative simply
answer the question of the resolution or is there something more to
the repetitious affirmation of "The U.S. federal government should…"
Ross:
Well, you covered
a lot of territory there, from mode of argument (narrative, song lyrics)
to the subject matter of the arguments. You have an good argument against
the politics disadvantages, but it seems one could argue that policy
desirability, independent of political feasibility, should be the question
of the debate without invoking activism. And whether or not students
end up being government policy makers, all of us make policy for ourselves
and often for organizations. There is great value in the intellectual
exercise of evaluating policies. I guess I would take a stab at the
cross-ex question by saying, "The judge votes affirmative if the
judge is persuaded (on the basis of the arguments in the debate) that
the affirmative plan (assuming a policy resolution) is desirable relative
to competing alternatives available to the agent that would adopt it."
Jairus:
Although I agree
that there is value to determining the desirability of particular policies
how does one decide the desirability of a policy independent of feasibility.
I do not want to be misconstrued as advocating political popularity
as the warrant for policy action, I think I have made my position on
the Clinton disadvantage quite clear. Instead, I think that we have
a pedagogical responsibility as both debaters and coaches to teach the
skills and strategies necessary to achieve our lofty goals. In the often
adversarial and competitive environment that we call United States democracy,
a peculiar arrangement of institutions, bureaucracies, and socio-cultural
contexts, a good and seemingly desirable policy is not nearly enough.
We are setting ourselves and our colleagues up for a tragic fall if
we believe and teach that policy making at any level is simply the search
for the best plan amongst competing alternatives. Kirk and I chose to
invoke activism because it was a way to develop political skills and
strategies that were useful for future contexts, but more importantly
to us, they could be useful in the debate community. It is difficult
for me to imagine an activity that many devote eight or more years to
that is not itself politically powerful and affective upon those who
participate in it. Therefore, we thought that the activist strategies
and styles performed during debates were important enough to be the
focus of the desirability question symbolized in the ballot.
I do not wish
to over-privilege the activist approach, but the traditional policy
approach to debate was not producing the skills to affect our immediate
surroundings. I feel uncomfortable with any form of education that continually
defers its practical use to some distant and unpredictable future particularly
when there is so much to do right now at this minute. It is not the
lack of good ideas, which stands in the way of social transformation.
We have plenty of ideas, now we need to develop the political skills
and understanding of our various contexts (governments, communities,
schools, etc.) necessary to implement those ideas.
Ross:
You agree there
is value to deciding the desirability of various policies. You ask how
one determines their value independent of feasibilty. Well, it seems
that weighing the advantages versus the disadvantages of a policy in
comparison with competing alternatives is the way we do it. If the policy
is "Jairus goes to U. of Chicago graduate school", Jairus
asks himself what the costs and benefits to himself are in light of
other opportunities he may have.
But you say we
have plenty of good ideas as if deciding that a given policy is desirable
were such a simple thing. It strikes me that there are many very knotty
policy problems. There is policy controversy not only because of competing
special interests but also because sometimes, even with the best of
intentions, reasonable people are faced with uncertainty, values are
in conflict, and there just isn't a quick fix. Of course, affirmative
teams try to find what they think might be a slam dunk case, but in
crafting resolutions the idea is to find a controversial area with ground
for both sides. Comparing a policy to competing alternatives is a way
to test the assumption that we have a good policy idea. And while this
in itself may not teach political and social skills most useful to the
activist, the analytical, research, and organizational skills taught
are still significant.
I agree that ONCE
THERE IS AGREEMENT that a particular policy is desirable, then folks
should figure out how to accomplish its enactment. But it is not clear
that academic debates with policy resolutions are the appropriate pedagogical
mechanism for advancing particular political or social causes. First,
young students in high school may not really have decided what political
or social causes they support or oppose. Second, the debate community
is not homogeneous at all. Debaters are not a group of activists with
a common cause. Their politics, ideologies, and interests vary widely.
Third, it is not clear that the "political skills and understandings"
or "strategies" you mention above would best be taught in
a competitive debate setting with policy resolutions. Tools of the activist
or politician include, fund raising, lobbying, protest marches, web
site design, broadcast media production, and networking, among others.
Now if we had different
resolutions, say of the form, "Resolved: that activists interested
in internet privacy should substantially change their tactics,"
then we could debate that. But even listening to you and Jairus debate
I cannot say I really learned anything about competing strategic or
tactical approaches to political action. Your opponents were not prepared
to debate that subject or were not interested in debating it. You ended
up winning when your opponents let you say that the debate was about
that when they really were prepared to debate whether the policy should
be pursued, not how to pursue it.
Finally, I do think
debate could better emphasize persuasive speaking skills which are important
for activists of any stripe. I think that if we had members of the community
as judges debaters would learn to persuade them. If we had members of
Congress as judges, debates would sound much different. But when debaters
go "judge shopping" from a strike sheet of debate coach/judges,
they will select those that are most amenable to their ideological and
practical view of debate from a perspective focused on winning.
Jairus: I am afraid
that the cost-benefit analysis of deciding my graduate school education
is somewhat different then a debate round. In this example, I was already
accepted to different universities to compare to Chicago. However, it
is not the case that institutions are equally accepting of all policy
alternatives. For example, if one wanted to provide food assistance
to Iraq because lets say the oil for food program was a sick farce,
it would be more effective and therefore more beneficial to organize
a non-governmental group of donors and supporters which could immediately
begin to take food to Iraq rather then spending the next ten years and
thousands of dollars trying to lobby the United States government.
I agree that the
pluralistic nature of the debate community means that we cannot assume
any particular political commitment nor should it have one. I am not
advocating that people be conditioned to faithfully follow my progressive
political beliefs, but I think that if debate is to be a political simulation
it should more closely reflect the political contexts we all face in
the course of our lives. Maybe we should debate about the best way to
raise money or protest. It is true that the debates I was involved in
rarely focused on strategy, but we did our best and the few rounds that
were truly different were well worth the effort. I think what you observed
through out the year was an attempt by Kirk and myself to use the structures
we were given to bring about the kind of questioning that is necessary
to produce new kinds of topics and educational opportunities. I do not
think there is an activity as educationally productive as debate. No
other setting can encourage the development of as many different political
skills in the form of research, communication, and critical thinking,
but that is no excuse to become complacent. Everything can get better.
I think an attempt to focus more on communication skills in debate will
always be our strongest point of agreement. Unless debate teaches us
to communicate, all of the good ideas in the world will get us no where.
We live in communities not as individuals therefore we must be able
to talk with one another not at one another.
1) Is there an
affirmative presumption/right to define the advocacy (this time we
would like to talk about political strategy, this time policy comparison)?
2) Could one
lose the argument that the plan is desirable and still win based on
better overall performance?
3) How might
you coach someone to debate against affs like your Korea aff?
4) How did you
use the normativity argument in quarters of NDT?
5) How much "advocacy
inclusiveness" is legitimate? Can one agree with all but one
comment the other team made? How might standards for the degree of
acceptable advocacy inclusiveness be developed?
6) What about
the dynamics of the argumentative situation? To what extent should
advocates be allowed to or encouraged to change their mind mid-debate?
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