The Kritik
What is the critique?
The next thing to talk about is the critique/kritik/K. I’ll present my understanding of the critique. Because kritik debates tend to have less evidence and can be decided in more possible ways, it’s important to clearly explain to judges how the debate should be resolved and why that method of resolution is in your favor.
The critique is an argument with three major parts: links, framing, and an alternative. First, we’ll discuss framing. Framing is the lens that the judge looks at the round through. While policy affirmatives will often assume a lens focused on the plan’s consequences, critiques will try to shift the framing to focus more on the representations or the ideology underpinning the aff.
The arguments that actually take issue with representations or ideology are called links. Critiques will usually have more than one link, just like policy 1NCs will usually have more than one disad. It’s to ensure diversity and to spread the opponent apart. That way, 2NRs can collapse more effectively.
In a consequentialist sense, link arguments can also be seen as nonunique linear disads. They’re nonunique because the actions that the aff takes are emblematic of a status quo ideology. For instance, a capitalism critique might argue that carbon taxes are capitalist because they believe in the power of markets to solve crises. Obviously there’s lots of capitalism in society, and there isn’t a brink to just how much capitalism is bad enough to trigger their impacts, but that’s the point. Their framing will make arguments that faith in capitalism is unethical and should be resisted despite the claimed policy benefits of the affirmative (which the critique should interrogate).
Framing will have a variety of methods of justification. One sort of justification is the ethical justification. Another kind is theoretical justification—this means using appeals to theory voters (usually education). Critiques will usually argue that plan focus creates bad forms of education and that judges should be critical educators tasked with creating better subjectivities. You might hear this as a role of the ballot/judge—these words mean the same things as framing. A third kind of justification is consequentialist justification. This kind of argument says that the ideology that the aff subscribes to has bad consequences. Capitalism critiques will usually argue that capitalism is destroying the planet, for instance. This argument doesn’t make sense consequentially though because, using the above example, it’s not like a carbon tax would destroy the planet. You should point out as the aff that the critique can’t “solve” for this impact, so it’s nonunique.
The alternative to the affirmative is tied heavily to framing. When people say the alternate, they mean the alternative, competing ideology that the judge should embrace. The ideology of the alt should “resolve,” or avoid, the links to the aff. For instance, an alt in the cap example above might endorse an ideology that refuses markets in favor of a more sustainable paradigm.
Permutations work in a similar way that they do for counterplans, except that ideologies/representations are being tested rather than policy advocacies. Negatives will always say that links are disads to the permutation, which follows logically from the fact that policy disadvantages are, in fact, disads to the counterplan permutation. Similar concepts apply to both—the critique perm can shield the link, and links can link to the alternative. “Permutation: do the alternative” doesn’t traditionally exist in the way that perm do the counterplan does. This is because judges automatically presume aff in a debate where the K has no link offense. The most important thing to sum up from this paragraph is the nature of permutations being mostly general across both counterplans and alternatives. All of these concepts are important to be able to know and justify off the top of your head. If you don’t know what grounds the critique theoretically, the other side will be able to pull some fast ones over you.
A classic example of this is the perm double bind. This argument looks something like Perm double bind—either the alt is so strong that it can solve for the links of the aff or it can’t resolve the links in the status quo. Let’s use the cap example above to understand this in plain English. This argument basically comes up with two extremes. It says that if the alternative can get rid of all of capitalism, the aff using markets to manage the climate doesn’t matter since the alt solves all issues with capitalism anyway. If the alternative can’t get rid of all capitalism, then there’s significant leftover capitalism that will cause capitalism’s bad impacts regardless of whether the plan passes. The perm double bind only makes sense when you think of a critique as a counterplan and a disad, which we’ve established doesn’t make sense above. When you think of the critique as an alternate orientation towards the world, the perm double bind seems nonsensical. The whole point is that the aff’s ideology is problematic and the negative is offering a better one. The alt doesn’t have to “solve” the links to the aff—if it did, then the aff would always just say perm shields the link and then win.
What is fiat? How do critiques problematize it?
I want to talk about some arguments that rely on fiat now, but I should talk about how fiat works first. Fiat, Latin for “let it be done,” is part of consideration. When you’re deciding whether or not to do something, you’re “fiating” the action. Fiat is intrinsic to action itself, whether passing a plan or endorsing an ideology. Scotty discusses it in more detail here. Different philosophies judge action right or wrong by different metrics. Utilitarianism/consequentialism judges actions based on their consequences. Deontology focuses on things intrinsic to action like whether they conform to ethical rules. Again, fiat is intrinsic to consideration—it can’t be “given” or “taken away” by either debater. It just is.
Some K debaters will make a (usually blippy) argument that fiat is illusory. This argument is both obviously true and without implication. “Fiat” is obviously “illusory.” It’s not like debaters are actually pretending to be the United States government passing a carbon tax. They’re merely debating whether an agent should take an action. Saying that the US should pass a carbon tax is akin to saying that people/society shouldn’t be prejudiced or any other prescriptive claim that a critique makes. There’s nothing that changes when the aff puts “plan:” before their advocacy.
Even worse, many debaters/judges will treat a 1-line fiat illusory argument made in the 1NC as a 2NR TKO. This is nonsensical. Simply saying fiat is illusory in less than 15 words does not rise to the level of a complete argument. It’s the same thing as saying “let us weigh the case because it’s key to fairness” (i.e. an incomplete argument) which Scotty points out here. It’s also fair to treat fiat illusory as a “shenanigan,” which Scotty illustrates how to answer here. Now you know why fiat is obviously illusory.
Another example that relies on a confused use of fiat is alternatives that fiat consequences. This isn’t inherently problematic but often can be. We talked above about how alternatives advocate a shift of values/orientation, but some debaters also state that their alternative fiats consequences in the same way that the aff fiats a plan.
The general rule for fiat abuse is either a) fiating states of affairs, not actions or b) fiating action by those outside the actor the aff uses. For instance, a negative Cap K debater may clarify in CX that they fiat a communist utopia that is free of emissions. Or, they might claim they fiat all individuals reducing their carbon consumption to zero. This should be ringing alarm bells—how can affs ever win if the neg can just do whatever it wants? The answer is that they shouldn’t be able to do things like this. Scotty discusses this further here. Affs should make theory arguments against this form of cheating.
What are good 1AR answers to the K?
I’m now going to discuss 1AR answers,.
The first answer most people tell you to make against the K is a framework argument. Framework and framing mean the same thing in this context, by the way. Usually framework will sound like “let us weigh the case.” “Weigh the case” doesn’t make sense because it’s impossible to weigh the policy consequences of the 1AC against the better representations of the neg.
The best framework argument to make is one that centers the consequences of the aff. For negs to win here, they just have to win that the aff’s bad assumptions cause an impact that turns and/or outweighs the case. Kevin Hirn elaborates on it in the last paragraph of his last comment on this page. That way you can weigh your aff, and the K can weigh the impacts of the aff’s harmful representations. You can argue fairness and education based reasons to justify this.
Third is a perm which we talked about above. You can read a short card here to substantiate the compatibility of the aff’s plan/ideology with the neg’s ideology.
Fourth is individual answers to links which should follow a common structure—no link and impact turn. You should realize that often times links are not actually to your aff. Neg evidence is often written in the context of something else, so negs will often mischaracterize what your aff says to make it fit a link argument. You should be vigilant of this and should point out how neg evidence doesn’t actually disagree with your aff’s position. This is best done through pre-round prep, but if need be, do it in-round. This is the no link.
You should also make an argument justifying what you did—i.e. impact turning the link. You can often pre-write impact turns as described in this and this from HS Impact.
You can see this combination in action here in a debate between Georgetown BK and Oklahoma University PS at the 2018 National Debate Tournament (the most prestigious college policy tournament).
You can also make an “alt doesn’t solve” or “alt bad” argument. These are strategic because they block the 2NR from re-explaining the alternative in a way that exploits the 1AR.
It’s also good to answer their framing.
Finally, you should answer their “theory” if they have one. This can range from psychoanalysis to structural pessimism. If you don’t answer their theory, then they will likely use the 2nr to completely destroy any hope of a 2ar ballot, so make sure you answer it.
What are 2NR cheaty arguments?
Now it’s time to talk about 2NR “cheaty” arguments.
The first is the floating plan-inclusive kritik (floating pik/fpik). The concept behind this is that the critique doesn’t disagree with the plan, only the justifications/representations supporting this. This is pretty unfair because it makes the debate entirely around some representation and nothing else. Tacking “this also justifies floating PIKs bad” onto the end of your framework argument is sufficient to answer it because the whole community agrees they’re bad. See here for more reading.
Second is flawed epistemology, which says that all of the aff’s arguments are wrong because they come from a flawed starting point/have flawed assumptions. There are two flavors of this argument. If their argument is that under capitalism/patriarchy/etc, all knowledge production is corrupted, you should point out that their evidence was produced in the same way the aff was. The other way they might make this argument is that specifically X field has bad methodology/research/etc. In both cases, you should argue that their claims are wrong/reference your link defenses above.
Third is value to life. This basically says that quantity of lives saved doesn’t matter without some quality of life. This will sometimes be a blip in the 1NC so make sure to answer it because for some judges it is a TKO.
There are lots more so just keep answers to them in your aff-specific answers file as you see them.
So I’ve talked about every speech on the K besides the 2AR, which is one of the harder speeches to give. In debate. You should pick a route to the ballot—a perm, or plan consequences and framework, and some combination of other things—and win it decisively, making sure to “over-explain” interactions that may be obvious in your head.
How can you beat underdeveloped Ks?
A K that is missing things should never succeed. Without links, a K has no way to compete with the aff. Without framing, the aff can always just go for extinction first and argue exclusive plan focus (that means neg can’t criticize reps!). Without an alternative, there’s nothing to generate “uniqueness”—there’s no alternate ideology the judge can even vote for that won’t contain the problems isolated by the links.
If a K is super short, you can make your answers short accordingly.
We just went over a bunch of kritikal basics. Time to move on from positions now.
Critique Examples
Most K’s are, in some sense, general from topic to topic. Since all critiques require lots of reading and understanding of history to deploy effectively, the following will only provide a surface-level explanation. I’m going to let other, more qualified people explain schools of critical thought in this section.
The first is the Capitalism K. It’s the classic debate K, and it’s usually just abbreviated to the Cap K. See this lecture by Scotty for more info. The first five minutes discuss general critique concepts, and everything after is Cap-specific.
Next is the Security K. There’s a good Foreign Affairs article here that exemplifies the security K’s argument. You can see an example in the third off here from the 2017-2018 college policy healthcare topic. Note that this 1NC critique shell isn’t particularly great because it isn’t specific to the aff.
Next is Psychoanalysis. This one involves thinkers such as Freud and Lacan to make claims about human desire. See this for details. UC Berkeley SM’s 1NC under the “Ecopsychoanalysis K” from the 2016-2017 college energy/climate policy topic here is a good example of this critique.
Another is Afropessimism. It makes a psychoanalytic claim that blackness is not included in the position of “Human” in civil society. See these two videos here and here for explanations. These lectures do come from the policy criminal justice topic from last year but are generally relevant. See Wake Forest EF’s 1nc from the 2018-2019 college policy topic on restricting presidential authority for an example critique.
Second to last is Settler Colonialism. This article is often cited as a foundational text in the discipline, so it’s worth reading it to understand it. An example case can be found here, which is UC Berkeley SM’s 1NC from the 2016-2017 college energy/climate policy topic.
The last ones I’ll mention are postmodern critiques. These are hard to define but often use semiotics to prove their points. Semiotics is a general category of psychoanalysis focused on signs. See this podcast for an example of Baudrillard’s theory of semiotics. See Michigan KM’s NEG page from the 2015-2016 college policy topic on military presence for examples of postmodern critiques.
A lot of people have difficulty understanding the critique, which is understandable. Critical ideologies are counter-intuitive at first since they criticize common assumptions society has. I’ve discussed stuff above in the research chapter relating to what I’ll say next, so feel free to look back. Reading primary sources, especially with postmodernist thinkers, will often leave you more confused if you’re new to debating the K. Reading Wikipedia isn’t much better. Critical concepts there aren’t presented in an accessible way. The best thing you can do is read secondary literature discussing these ideologies and applying them to concrete examples from the real world (this is the bread and butter of your critique links, anyway).