I’ve found that a major downside of dedicating time to speech and debate instead of some other high school extracurricular is that it’s painful not being able to tell everyone about my amazing escapades in certain rounds. Sure, if I played basketball, anybody could at least understand and appreciate the significance of my telling them about an amazing three-pointer I sank last night, but it’s difficult to elicit the same response from the average person when it comes to some really cool DA I ran two weeks ago at a tournament. For that reason, my excitement over the weird things I do in rounds tends to get stopped up and then flow out at random times when the opportunity arises. I consider this blog post as great a chance as ever for the floodgates to come crashing down, so brace yourselves (and yes, I promise that this is at least somewhat relevant to you).
Two weeks ago, I was at my first NCFCA tournament of the season, competing in TP among other events. The first day was going fairly normally. It was around 7 PM, and round 4 postings had just gone up. My partner and I checked them, noted we were neg, and headed off to our room. A couple minutes after we and the aff team showed up, our judge walked in. He was a community judge, and he explained to us that, one, he himself was a former debater and had spent a number of years in high school and college in the activity, and, two, that his philosophy was completely tabula rasa; anything and everything goes so long as the debaters could support their position. The moment he said “anything and everything,” an evil cackle started up in the back of my mind. To make a long story short, my partner and I won the round by persuading the judge to completely ignore the affirmative plan and instead vote negative because our team was more vocal about racial injustice in America. Oh, and in the 2NC, I persuaded the judge to give every debater in the round 30 speaks (which he did).
These sorts of arguments are called “kritiks,” and whether you’re familiar with them, repulsed, or intrigued, it’s what we’re discussing today, and in the next several hundred words, I hope to persuade you of the necessity of at least having an understanding of how they work and how to run them.
The What
A bit of background may be in order for those less familiar with this type of argument. Broadly speaking, a kritik is an argument that asserts the judge should evaluate the round based on anything other than whether the affirmative upholds the resolution. This can range from kritiks like the one about racial injustice described above, to claims that the judge should vote against the other team for wearing shoes, to arguments that the philosophical underpinnings of the opposing case are flawed independent of the case itself.
You might be thinking “What?! Ignore the aff plan entirely? What’s even the point of policy debate then?” I have a few answers for you:
- Just like any other type of argument, kritiks aren’t necessarily incompatible with traditional debate tactics. In the round described earlier, my partner and I also ran “normal” arguments in conjunction with the kritik and the argument about 30 speaks.
- At some level, kritiks may very well be even more valid than debate about the resolution! Think about it: as much discussion as may go into an hour and fifteen minute debate about the merits of the affirmative policy, that policy is never going to be passed after an affirmative ballot; the debate doesn’t change that. However, the actions taken by the debaters during the round, unlike the plan, are tangible and have real effects in the real world. Kritiks recognize and capitalize on this fact.
- Keep in mind that although resolutional debate is “normal,” there are no rules that bind you as the debaters to it (unless you’re in Stoa or CCA, at which point you’re advised to click off this article unless for the sake of your own curiosity or your potential future in collegiate debate), and so the nature of debate itself is always up for debate.
Structure
Just like a topicality argument or disadvantages, kritiks tend to be structured. There’s no universal consensus on the means by which they’re structured, but they’re fairly similar to a T-press in many ways, so that’s the structure I’ll break down as an example:
- Interpretation
Here you explain to the judge how you think the debate should be framed instead of resolutional debate. Examples of interpretations are voting for teams that are vocal in denouncing socially harmful ideologies, voting for teams that do or don’t take certain actions in the round, and so on. Anything goes. Under here you’ll also explain why your framing is superior to that of your opponents (much in the same way you might attack your opponents’ interpretation of the resolution in Topicality under your standards). - Violation
Here you explain why the other team fails the criteria set forth in the interpretation. In the example kritik in the first paragraph, the violation I and my partner ran was that the aff team failed to be vocal about racial injustice in either of their constructives and therefore didn’t meet our interp. - Alternative
Here you explain what the judge should do in light of the fact that the opposing team has failed the interp, which is usually just to vote for your side since you (presumably) meet it.
The Why
I’ve got two reasons for you why it’s worth taking the time to, at a bare minimum, familiarize yourself with kritikal theory:
- College
Congratulations, the voice of your mom is unavoidable even if she’s not in the room, and yes, you need to be thinking about college (I’m operating on the assumption that the majority of you readers out there are considering post-secondary education. If you, O reader, are not, skip to reason 2). More so than many high school leagues such as NCFCA, Stoa, CCA, CCofSE, NCFL, and others, collegiate debate tends to make regular use of kritiks, and by familiarizing yourself with them now, you’ll have a jumpstart on the next chapter of your debate career before it even begins. - Unicorn judges
And by this, I mean the one judge you get who, like the one I described earlier, has previous experience with progressive debating and will listen to any and every argument you can come up with. Nor are these judges as rare as you might think. In the last two years of my debate career, I, for one, have come across three judges of this variety, though only in my most recent encounter with one did I capitalize on the opportunity presented to me. Put simply, kritiks are a sure-fire way to win in front of judges like these given that, especially in homeschool leagues, your opponents will have no idea what is going on, but the judge will be following along fine. Imagine that you spoke some obscure foreign language, and a judge mentioned in their philosophy that they speak the same language and will accept arguments spoken in it. That’s the firepower you have up your sleeve with kritiks in these situations. I’m not saying that these rounds come around often–but when they do, I can assure you that they’ll be worth the little bit of time you spent brushing up on kritikal theory.
As you’ve likely gathered, I’m a huge fan of kritiks and almost-as-huge-of-a-fan of discussing them, so if you have any questions or comments about what’s been discussed here, just let me know down in the comments, and I’d love to chat.
Hope you guys found this helpful!
———————————————————————————————————————
Ben Brown is the blog manager for Ethos Debate LLC. He has competed in Team Policy debate for four years, ranking in the top 16 nationally every year of his high school career in addition to having obtained a smattering of national placings in speech. When not debating, Ben can be found wishing he was debating, playing board games, or hanging out with friends and family.
Hi Ben, I am a parent of Stoa and I am intrigued by this article and a bit bewildered as to what this looks like when fleshed out. I’m also not sure what rules Stoa has against this. Please enlighten me!
Hey Lisa!
As noted in the article, the strategies described here wouldn’t work in Stoa since, unlike other leagues, Stoa binds its competitors to debate about the resolution not only by norms, but also by the rules (specifically by Team Policy rules 2) A & B – “It is the job of the affirmative team to uphold the resolution. If the affirmative is successful, they win, and the judge should vote for the resolution. If the affirmative fails to do so, the negative team wins, and the judge should vote accordingly.”). Since kritiks attempt to center the debate around something other than whether the affirmative upholds the resolution or not, they would violate the Stoa rules (although the rules of most other leagues, including NCFCA and NCFL, don’t include any similar restrictions and thus permit debaters to run kritiks, hence this article’s discussion of them). Does that answer your question?
Hi Lisa, I’ll preface by saying that kritiks like what Ben described in the article (about racism) can be a bit wild/shaky, and especially in homeschool leagues such politically-progressive arguments likely won’t get much traction. Additionally, I agree that Stoa has a stronger barrier due to the rules’ emphasis on the resolution. **However,** I partially disagree with Ben’s points about the wholesale invalidity of all kritiks in Stoa: I actually wrote a deeper intro to Kritiks a while back (https://www.ethosdebate.com/krazy-kritiks/), and in that article I touch on some of these issues. For example, I noted that 1) beliefs about the absoluteness of following rules is a judging preconception (for better or worse), and 2) you could compare the acceptance of kritiks to jury nullification in court.
Notably, I also mention some kritiks which might be passable even in conservative leagues like Stoa—although I still generally wouldn’t recommend them except in very niche scenarios. For example:
• Mature topics kritik: suppose the affirmative in a team policy round is running a case on child abuse and/or sex trafficking (which, to my knowledge, is the focus of at least one of the current cases this year). A negative might argue that affirmatives should not run cases which require students to do research about child abuse and/or sex trafficking, which may expose students as young as 14 to graphic or otherwise inappropriate stories. Isaiah McPeak actually wrote a draft version of this kritik, accessible here: https://www.ethosdebate.com/mature-topics-kritik/.
• A spreading kritik or negative block kritik in team policy: For dramatic illustration, suppose a negative team only gives a 4-minute 1NC, where they mostly make nothing-burger arguments against a case, like frivolous topicality. Then, in the 2NC the negative makes all of their good arguments at a breakneck pace, using the full 8 minutes of the 2NC, then the 1NR also delivers a dense, fast-paced rebuttal, and implies “the 1AR needs to address all the points my partner and I just made or they’re dropped”. This is a dubious strategy I’ve outlined in a previous article (https://www.ethosdebate.com/splitting-the-neg-how-why-and-when-to-use-and-counter/), and is why I’ve argued for changing TP speaking times (https://www.ethosdebate.com/its-time-for-a-change-in-team-policy-speaking-times/). In its 1AR, the affirmative might give a brief “kritik” (probably without even labeling it as such) which basically says “The negative team has crammed all of their main arguments into a 13 minute window and is expecting us to respond in 5 minutes. This strategy kills the back-and-forth nature of debate, and you shouldn’t tolerate it, judge. I can’t cover everything, but I ask the judge to allow my partner to cover any remaining points in the 2AR. If the negative wanted to respond to our responses, they could and should have made the arguments in the 1NC.”
• Bias-targeting kritik: suppose a team in parliamentary or TP runs a case about banning abortion or some other conservative red-meat topic—especially if it’s a stretch of topicality. A negative team might protest, saying that 1) there were plenty of other directions the affirmative could have gone (e.g., it wasn’t a parli resolution that said “This house opposes abortion”), 2) the negative shouldn’t be forced to defend a position they might have deep ethical or emotional disagreements with, and 3) the affirmative shouldn’t take a position that many community judges will be very biased about (or who might feel upset/guilty if they decide they should vote against the anti-abortion position).
Hey Ben, loved the article and just have a few questions.
First, In Stoa, Kritiks get run as an argument responding to the Affirmative’s philosophy. Typically, they are run by saying that Affs logic is incorrect or immoral etc. etc. but because they are so much different than NCFCA Kritiks, would you advise running the same Interpretation, Violation, and Alternative format? If so, what would that look like?
Second, at the last tournament we hit and lost to a Kritik. The Kritik was saying our logic that boosting AI was good was flawed because, they explained (with sub-point A through F) AI would end up in America becoming Totalitarian and Communist. Further, they impacted this to all American citizens becoming domesticated animals. I hadn’t encountered Kritiks before so in my 1AR (the Kritik was run in the 2NC) I treated it like a disadvantage, obviously arguing that AI would not lead to America being totalitarian and communist. In the future, when Kritiks in Stoa are run saying that our logic is flawed but impacted it to a negative consequence to the plan, how would you advise responding, especially with a first time judge? Should it be responded to as a disadvantage or a logic kritik? Of course, this question only applies in situations where those options are in conflict, such as a 1AR where time does not permit both kinds of responses.
Thanks!
Hey Sam! To answer your first question, I don’t think it’s necessary to use the same outline as suggested here for kritiks as you describe them; it sounds to me as though the arguments you’ve listed aren’t necessarily at odds with a resolutional view of debate, and thus the necessity of reframing the round is absent. If anything, I would say that to call such arguments kritiks is a bit of a misnomer.
To answer your second question, I would respond to kritiks like the one you encountered in one of two ways:
The first (and likely more applicable) response would be that your plan doesn’t “enact a philosophy” or a given way of thinking; assuming that both sides are still on the same page in regards to aff’s burden being to prove a net beneficial plan, even if your plan is consistent with some undesirable ideology, the kritik isn’t any reason at all to vote negative if it doesn’t translate into any concrete impacts created by the plan.
Second, if neg does go so far as to attach undesirable effects to the kritik, I would simply treat it like a disadvantage since at that point, it’s just doing the same job under a different name.
Thanks for the article. As a long time coach and debate committee member, I humbly disagree that Stoa rules disallow Kritiks. To make your claim, you only quote one part of one rule, when the individual rules are to be taken in the context of the whole. The Stoa rules open with the Statement of Purpose which states,
“The purpose of Team Policy debate is to instill in Christian home school students the skills of presentation, critical thinking, research, and policy analysis. That endeavor is accomplished in an environment of honorable competition that cultivates maturity, wisdom, grace, poise, and brings glory to our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Please note that debaters are to be honorable, and bring glory to our Lord Jesus Christ. That is important in the context of the whole.
Moving down to Section I concerning the Judge, statements 1 and 2 are,
1) Stoa acknowledges the judge as the “first line of defense” for all rule infractions, ethical questions, irregularities, and disciplinary issues.
2) The judge is at liberty to use all aspects of the round to reach a conclusion regarding the ballot.
These two statements taken together with the Statement of Purpose allows for Kritiks when it is viewed and argued as dishonoring to Christ, or otherwise violates ethical standards. If a team violates ethical standards, the opposing should bring this to the attention of the judge in the round and they, the judges, are at liberty to judge the round based on that alone, regardless of whether the AFF fulfills its duty to uphold the resolution.
Just my two cents as one who helped write and fashion the rules. If a Kritik is truly warranted for the reasons above, by all means, run it.