From: Maxwell Schnurer <masst188+@PITT.EDU>
To: EDEBATE@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Conservative Critiquing
Here is a copy of my paper, conservative critiquing, that I
presented at the most recent NCA. I would love any commentary/feedback
from teh community about the paper -- Enjoy, maxwell Schnurer
In The Beginning there was Critiquing
This primary argument of this paper is that critiquing has been a
traditional argumentative tool that debaters and thinkers have used for
years. This line of inquiry leads to the obvious question: why the
academic debating community has resisted, and even been hostile to
critiquing in debate rounds. The fears of critiquing are explored and
discussed in an attempt to move toward more common ground on this
important argumentative strategy. I propose that critiquing holds great
promise to expand the areas of research and argumentative diversity in our
activity. To support the move toward critiquing, I suggest that debaters
defend critiquing as conservative - an argument with tradition. This
provides the potential to change the meaning of debates by rethinking the
selective nature of our argumentative choices.
The future of intercollegiate debate is in flux with new ideas and diverse
participants. I believe that the activity of debate as we have known it
is headed for a death knell. The focus on policy-making as a traditional
paradigm is being imploded as students look to a much wider variety of
sources for their arguments. As well, the rise of new initiatives to
increase participation of people of color, womyn, and queers in the debate
activity are challenging the spaces of dominance that once were off
limits. At the forefront of both of these changes is Emory University
whose debaters are constantly innovating debate ideas to include diverse
perspectives and pushing the envelope of what is acceptable in the debate
rounds. Emory has also been the long-time sponsor of the Urban Debate
League, a program that brings diverse high school students to the
Universities Debate Institute. Their recent outreaches to New York and
Atlanta have been huge successes, increasing the diversity of the high
school debate population by the hundreds. The increase of people of color
in the debate activity will mean new arguments, as their background
knowledge becomes applicable in debate rounds . This argumentative
diversity, both fostered by diverse participants or found in the ever
widening search for evidence will mean an increase in critiquing in
academic debate. The question for our community is how we will face the
complexities of a world with more critiquing?
Been There, Done That.
The critique is a traditional and entirely common argument
structure. The strategy of attacking the assumptions of an argument
rather than directly "clashing" with that argument has been used with
great success for years. I would like to state now that this article will
be more general than some that have come before it. Both William Shanahan
(1993), and Brian Lain (1996), have undertaken the more difficult task of
categorizing and defining the critique. In this case, I would prefer to
remain a bit vague, by encompassing a variety of debate arguments whose
common theme is an attack on the assumptions of an argument. This
approach may garner criticism of specificity, but will enable the
discussion to begin, which is the purpose of this paper.
Critiquing is by no means new; its origins go back as far as
people have argued with each other. Sometimes called attacking the
subset, or finding flaws in assumptions, the process of critiquing has
been used for thousands of years. Let us begin in the grandfather of
rhetoric, Aristotle. Aristotle discusses what we now call critiquing in
On Rhetoric, when he discusses enthymemes. The enthymeme is a version of
a syllogism with a premise left out of the argument that the audience
fills in by themselves. Aristotle considers the enthymeme a powerful tool
of persuasion because the audience participates in the argument (187-188).
It is worth noting that modern debate requires a certain level of
enthymematic argumentation. If a negative team is running Fast Track
Authority as an impact to a Clinton disadvantage, they will not state
every assumption of the argument. It is not uncommon for negative teams
to never speak of the importance of Free Trade (which I would argue is the
essential implication of Fast Track Authority). This is enthymematic
logic, the playing on the assumptions of the audience to fill in the
non-stated elements of an argument. Given the time constraints of a
debate, the use of enthymemes is essential to persuading an audience. If
an affirmative debater were to walk through all of the assumptions of an
argument, they would find themselves out of time before they were finished
with their inherency contention.
Aristotle spoke in chapter 25: 'Lysis, or Undoing an Opponent's
Enthymemes,'
1. The next point in the continuing discussion is to speak about
refutation. It is possible to refute either by stating an opposite
syllogism or by bringing an objection. 2. Now, clearly, an opposite
syllogism can be made from the same topics[as the opponent's but drawing
the opposite conclusion]; for the syllogisms [of rhetoric] are derived
from commonly held opinions [endoxa], and many opinions are opposed to
each other. 3. Objections are brought as has been described in the Topics
[and] are of four sorts; for either they are derived from the original
argument or from something similar or from the opposite or from what has
been judged true. 4. By the original argument I mean, for example, if the
enthymeme concerned love, claiming it was good; the objection [then] would
be double: for it could be generally claimed that all lack is bad [and
love is a feeling of lacking something] . . . (211).
The argument raised by Aristotle is clear: arguments against enthymemes
can take the form of critiques. The example of the argument "All love is
good," can be attacked by suggesting that love is a type of lacking and
lacking is bad. If we apply the same type of argument to the Clinton
disadvantage with the Fast Track Authority impact, we get a similar
phenomenon. The Clinton disadvantage argues that "Fast Track Authority is
good." One could attack of this disadvantage by arguing that Fast Track
Authority is centered on Free Trade and Free Trade is bad. Aristotle
suggests critiquing as a way to bring the assumed claims of the enthymeme
into the light of public discourse. The same can be said for the modern
debate critique. The critique as a debate argument asks that the assumed
knowledge of another debate argument be brought out and debated rather
than assumed.
I find critiques all over the place. When I read articles and
books, I see authors argue critiques against one and another all the time
with the same kind of logic that we use in a debate rounds. In a recent
issue of Harper's, Bill McKibben suggests a critique of one of my favorite
pleasures, nature photography. McKibben argues that our societies lust
for images of nature photography only harm the animals and our
understanding of nature. As a subscriber to Natural History, and a sucker
for Animal Planet, I was startled to watch his argument unfold.
In the wild, photographers often need to subtly harass wildlife to get
their shots: to camp near watering holes, say, where their very presence
may unnerve and scatter creatures. Worse, and less recognized, is a sort
of conceptual problem. After a lifetime of exposure to nature shows and
magazine photos, we arrive at the woods conditioned to expect splendor and
are surprised when the parking lot does not contain a snarl of animals
mating and killing one another. Because the only images we see are
close-ups, we've lost much of our sense of the calm and quotidian beauty
of the natural world, of the fact that animals are usually preoccupied
with hiding or wandering around looking for food (19).
This is critiquing! Bringing an assumption (that animal
photography can only be beneficial) to light as a dangerous assumption
with implications. After the critique, we are forced to view the entire
dialogue that came before it as shortsighted. Imagine the following
imaginary discussion between editors of Natural History:
Paul (Editor #1): "Perhaps an elephant would be best on the cover
of the magazine this month? It would represent the African Savannah
section so well. . ."
Gordie (Editor #2): "I believe that a Burmese Tiger would be the
best animal for the cover this month because of their beauty and grace."
This discussion is irrelevant in the face of the critique posed by
McKibben, because both policies are bad options because they rely on
wildlife photography that is suspect to is critique . Critiquing attacks
a lower level of argument than might be traditionally debated, and often
subsumes much of the debate in a sweeping argument against all previous
approaches.
One of my favorite critique authors is William Safire, the
conservative language critic for the New York Times. Safire loves to look
at the history and assumptions behind word usage, often to the ridicule of
the speakers of those words. This is critiquing because he is creating an
argument out of an accepted truth. This is a sensitive characteristic of
critiquing, which often causes tension in those being critiqued. The
feeling that one is forced back to look at a minute part of ones argument,
ignoring the rest of your argument can be frustrating, but is necessary.
McKibben and Safire both excel at arguing against the assumptions of
people who operate on a level of truth that is not reflected upon. Those
who critique force a examination of the arguments that we have assumed or
already worked past.
When I first started debating we had argued critiques all the
time, but we called them Value Objections. CEDA debate was value debate
when I began my debate career, and I got used to attacking the background
values that people advocated. We would link up either "self-centered
individualism" or "communitarianism bad" to affirmatives depending on
their cross-examination questions about the role of
individuals/communities. I hear echo's of this story whenever I talk to
an older debate coach. When we begin to talk about critiques, they will
inevitably exclaim: "We had critiques in my time, but we didn't call them
critiques!" I believe that critiquing has been a part of the debate
tradition for many years and part of the argumentation tradition for many
years before that. This understanding leads to an obvious question: why
do debaters and coaches afraid of critiquing?
"The Horror, The Horror!"
Critiques have been here all along. They are in the society at
large, in our argumentative history, and in debate rounds for many years.
Why are we terrified of critiquing if it is such a logical part of our
argumentation history? The answer is tied up in some difficult
explanations, but is worthy of being explored.
I believe that we are afraid of having our assumptions attacked.
Debate is an activity that is uncomfortable to begin with - we are asked
to defend our ideas in a sphere where it is accepted for people to attack
what we say. Almost no other activity is as grueling for the ego as
debate. I have seen dozens of novice debates dissapear after a
particularly brutal first tournament. I think the reason is in the
process of confrontation that we foster . We attack one and other's ideas
with a vigor that is surprising at times. If we stay in the activity for
a while, we reach a comfortable rapport with ourselves that allows us to
distance the attacks on our ideas from the attacks on ourselves. We build
an imaginary wall of relativism that enables us to distance ourselves from
the attacks on our arguments. We become so distant that what we argue
often has no meaning beyond the victory that is achieved. Advocacy has
gone out the window because it is too difficult to maintain advocacy in an
environment where you're personal beliefs could be cut to ribbons or worse
yet, lose you the debate. We see this situation all the time in great
debaters who will argue "anything for the win ."
When it comes time to debate, most debaters have a pretty good
idea of the kinds of arguments they can face. They have debated
disadvantages, topicality and solvency before. Critiques are a new
territory, because they challenge people in new ways by attacking their
assumptions. To questions assumptions of arguments that are unspoken is
threatening. Critiquing is disturbing because we often don't have a
choice about the assumptions of our debate arguments (or we don't think
about the implications of our arguments), and feel attacked when our
arguments are critiqued.
I also believe there is a competitive angle to this argument.
Debaters don't want to defend their assumptions because it is difficult to
do so. In part, this difficulty of teams to respond to critiques is
because they are not used to them yet. When a debater writes an
affirmative case, they will consider many of the disadvantages and
counterplans that are obvious threats to their case. This is always the
case with critiques because our community is not yet familiar with the
literature. Critiquing is an activity that we separate for some reason
from the rest of debate, despite its obvious place in the argumentation
lexicon.
The paranoia around critiquing comes from the fear of the unknown.
The argument form itself is not new, but the implications of the argument
are terrifying. Critiquing means exposing the soft-underbelly of debate
to the watching eyes of the community. It means discussing the
"things-not-to-be-discussed" in the debate forum. This can be scary, but
exposes the true benefit of critiquing, the return of advocacy, and a more
diverse selection of debate arguments.
The Right Forum
It is time to ask some tough questions of debate. Because we are
afraid to debate about the assumptions behind our arguments, we have
created a fantasyland of debate: policy-making. It is fun to imagine that
we are Senators, but not particularly realistic. Most of us are students,
and as students, we should be asking critical questions to enhance our own
facilities of learning rather than playing by the established traditions
of policy-making . Debaters should be challenging the privileged areas of
traditional knowledge and expanding our repertoire to new kinds of
arguments. Debate should look toward a diversity of new ideas to question
policies (if we choose to ground our debates in policy). Before we jump
to being members of congress I suggest that we take a few moments and
consider some of the things we are advocating and explore the background
assumptions that create the possibility of such arguments. At the Capital
City Debates in 1997, I saw two critiques of deterrence. In both debates,
the negative won because the affirmative cases relied on the theory of
military deterrence to deter china from attacking, and they couldn't
defend deterrence. These critiques should remind us that we should be
asking questions at all levels of the debate. In both of the Capital City
Debates, affirmatives were not prepared to defend the core assumption of
their case - that deterrence works! Debate without critiques is often
shallow because essential arguments are ignored. Critiques get to the
essential elements of debates that are often ignored in favor of political
feasibility or some variant of backlash arguments.
A clear benefit of critiquing is the introduction of arguments
that carry a different worldview. Non-critique debating operates under
the same assumptions as the affirmative. Critiques provide an escape from
that type of argument by proposing alternative viewpoints from which a
judge could evaluate the round. An example of this kind of critique is a
Deep Ecology critique of disease affirmatives. On the Southeast Asia
topic, there have been several affirmatives that claim to eradicate a
certain disease (AIDS/HIV, malaria), or track diseases to enable doctors
to better fight the disease. Deep Ecology offers a potent challenge to
these arguments in a critique of anthropocentrism. Dave Foreman, a
founder of Earth First! Argued:
[Earth First! Has] an enthusiastic embracing of the philosophy of Deep
Ecology or biocentrism. This philosophy states simply and essentially
that all living creatures and communities possess intrinsic value,
inherent worth. Natural things live for their own sake, which is another
way of saying that they have value. Other beings (both animal and plant)
and even so-called "inanimate" objects such as rivers and mountains are
not placed here for the convenience of human beings. Our biocentric
worldview denies the modern concept of "resources." The dominant
philosophy of our time (which contains Judeo-Christianity, Islam,
capitalism, Marxism, scientism, and secular humanism) is anthropocentrism.
It places human beings at the center of the universe, separates them from
nature, and endows them with a unique value. Earth First!ers are in
direct opposition to that philosophy. Ours is an ecological perspective
that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as
"disease" (e.g. malaria) and "pests" (e.g. mosquitoes) not as
manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary
components of an complex and vibrant biosphere (26-27).
The challenge of this critique is direct and obvious. Affirmative
teams have assumed that diseases and pests are enemies to be conquered and
solved. The critique asks that the enemy be re-examined as an important
and essential part of an ecosystem. The critique becomes a reason to
reject the basic logic of the affirmative case. An added benefit of this
critique is that it brings an entire other perspective of Deep Ecology to
the debate, expanding the number of perspectives that are offered as
"truths." This multiplicity of "truths" is essential to a vibrant life,
because we need to see multiple perspectives to make decisions and solve
problems. Critiques challenge the dominance of single perspectives by
creating a forum where alternative perspectives are not only allowed, but
are encouraged because they are successful. Debates should be that forum,
including as many complicated ideas as possible. This argument takes on
an important implication when we consider the rising diversity of people
in the debate community. We need to be open to perspectives of womyn,
people of color, queers, and disenfranchised peoples of all sorts to make
our debate community, and our global community work. Critiquing allows
the space for arguments that come from excluded voices .
The Turn: Conservative Critiquing
I suggest the reclaiming of the high ground in this debate about
critiquing. Our community needs to redefine critiquing as vital and
important to our activity and to our world. Until that time comes
debaters should continue to practice and defend critiquing as natural and
important. Debaters need to re-interpret the controversy surrounding the
critique to remind judges (and coaches) of the power of the argument.
Maintaining that critiquing is a traditional argumentative function will
go a long way toward an understanding of critiques as conservative.
Conservative critiquing means looking at the logical foundations
of arguments and using all of the options available to attack arguments.
This approach toward critiquing largely ignores the imaginary
policy-making paradigm, in favor of a path that pushes us to look far
a-field for debate arguments. This proposal creates the space for
argument and participant diversity by addressing all levels of assumptions
in the debate round. Conservative critiquing challenges the debate
community to move forward, while reminding us of the long tradition of
critiquing in our activity. This turn of critiquing can create more
meaningful debates, enhance a climate of diversity in our activity, and
hopefully move us further along in changing some of the problems of our
world.
References
Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Trans. George Kennedy. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. New York: Harmony Books.
1991.
Lain, Brian. "Verb, That's What's happening: Kritiking Theory and
Pracice," Debaters Research
Guide: Juvenile Crime. Roger Solt and Ross Smith, Eds. Wake
Forest University: Winston
Salem. 1996. P. A-12.
McKibben, Bill. "Curbing Nature's Paparazzi," Harper's Magazine. Nov.
1997: 19-24.
Shanahan, William. "Kritik of Thinking," Debaters Research Guide:
Debating Coverage Cures. Roger
Solt and Ross Smith, Eds. Wake Forest University: Winston Salem.
1993. P. A-4.
King Maxwell & Elena Cattaneo - Revolutionary Warriors for Justice!
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