7 ms·

Is critical theory a rhetorical dead-end if you want to seriously debate something? Sure, but framing a debate and constricting it to a dichotomy is no less rad

Is critical theory a rhetorical dead-end if you want to seriously debate something? Sure, but framing a debate and constricting it to a dichotomy is no less radicalising than a critical theory argument. I think people dislike critical theory so much because they know that it shifts focus to the structures everyone knows control society but nobody wants to acknowledge. Sure, it’s lazy to blindly advocate for revolution for the sake of revolution, but it’s also lazy to reject a line of philosophical inquiry just because you don’t like how it was presented. What should high school debate even be for? Should we restrict it to rhetorical sandboxes, or should we allow it to be a forum where ideas can be put forth and debated?

taeric 3y ago
I think the point is some view debate as a way to force folks to consider views they might not fully agree with. The search for common ground was the lesson. As this story is presented, a lot of these feel like non-sequiturs. Not wrong, and not not worth discussing, but not in the spirit of the debate.
sixo 3y ago
Mmm, it's a dead-end without a philosophical framework powerful enough to contain it. It's like trying to decide how to build a system/business while also trying to work out what to build/what problem you're solving. At some point, to actually do anything, you have to pinch off the space of all possible problem requirements/business objective/etc.—not permanently, but long enough to start building! You certainly can't coordinate a large team to do it when the goal itself is changing. You have to draw a line around something and saying "we're doing this", and then focus on how to do it. In ML terms: If you don't commit to a goal for a while, then every time you encounter uncertainty in whether you're accomplishing your current goal, it will "backpropagate" to increase uncertainty in the goal itself. This can easily become unmanageable. To make any progress, you need a series of forward passes (attempting to do things) and backward passes (revising your idea of what you're trying to do.) Balancing these is a skill, and is highly contingent on what you're doing, runway, etc. Applied to debating with critical theory, this means: if you constantly cast doubt on the entire framework of modernity, you can never come up with a useful answer about any particular thing in the immediate present. Every potential harm or pain backpropagates to indict the entire system. These harms are rightly considered indictments of the system—but in the real world, unlike in a debate, you still have to act. I haven't done debate myself, but these same problems come up in internet discourse all the time, and it seems clear that you need to some equipment to handle this tendency to make any progress. What's necessary is the ability to designate "responsibility", i.e. leadership.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I would suggest that it's a dead end without a mutually agreed upon philosophical framework to contain it. The participants in a debate are unlikely interested in agreeing to one particular framework, and this is a big part of why critical theory in other areas is such a hot-button issue: the philosophical presuppositions that critical [X] theorists want you to make are inconsistent with the worldviews of some other people (and even inconsistent with other critical theories in some instances).
- ducharmdev 3y ago
  I wonder if the speed/frequency of discourse has soured some of the potentially good ideas that critical theory can put forth. In college I had a deep interest in critical theory, but I recall most of my time with it spent simply thinking: reflecting on the ideas and critiquing them myself. We didn't exactly debate the ideas, either - it was more akin to collaborative analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. As you suggest, I think allowing this ebb and flow made the experience a more fruitful one.
leetcrew 3y ago
it's more that it's like showing up to a spelling bee and giving a long monologue about how the spelling of words is arbitrary and the entire competition is meaningless. you're not wrong, but you can't expect people to appreciate your derailing the event either. if you so thoroughly reject the premise of the event, why are you even participating?
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > if you so thoroughly reject the premise of the event, why are you even participating? Any debater making these arguments on the affirmative side almost certainly includes an argument answering this question when they are doing it.
  - tekla 3y ago
    Yep. As it turns out, people who debate k's already have well thought out answers to the knee jerk reaction arguments.
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  Spelling bees are a quirk of the English language (though there are other languages with more perverse orthography see Hindi). I feel like the notion that words have a "correct" spelling, and memorizing that is turned into a competition that is often televised and broadcast and highly promoted to all middle-school students in the US, is probably political in nature. At least one should probably question why it is we even have spelling bees, the history of spelling bees, the structural questions, the constitution of the game itself as it relates to the worship of the Word (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, as they say), and the place of the Word in the organization of society. But those are only a few things you could ask. A debate student, when asked to argue about the place of spelling bees in our society, might generate these very arguments. A young student who is winning a lot of spelling bees probably wouldn't, and they'd get laughed out of the auditorium if they couldn't answer and then started arguing that spelling bees were racist or something like that. I think your point is moot.
  - 3y ago
msla 3y ago
Here's where it's a dead end: > “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist... I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging... I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments... Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.” If there's no way to defend against an argument because it's Objectively Correct in the eyes of the judges, that isn't debate, it's a lecture with extra steps. It's like being able to on stage and win by screaming "SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!" and nobody being able to counter it. If this is a competition, it should outlaw winning moves that can't be countered.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  That person can have those beliefs, but they have disqualified themselves from being a judge. By their own words, they have said that they cannot and will not judge objectively. So they should be disqualified from judging.
- istjohn 3y ago
  True enough, but I'm not terribly impressed that the author was able to find one stupid judge statement. There are probably other judges vowing to reject kritical arguments out of hand, which is just as indefensible.
  - jasmer 3y ago
    [dead]
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Not only is that judge statement not where she claimed it to be (2023 toc judge paradigms - i think she actually pulled it from past media coverage of the 2022 toc), she had to scroll incredibly far to find a paradigm incendiary like this.
vorpalhex 3y ago
We should totally disregard anyone who seriously backs critical theory and treat it the same as "Because God". A theory that can explain everything is a terrible theory and explains nothing. Responding to your critics that they don't get it because of racial ad-hominem attacks isn't a defense. Factual statements have criteria that would disprove them. There are experiments that would support a flat earth if that were an accurate reflection of reality. There is no such criteria for critical theory. Fail to find structural forces? You've simply been conditioned to ignore them. Explain away differences using a robust model? You're simply not being an ally. Critical theory is not science, it's sloppy religious nonsense.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  You miss the point. Critical theory doesn't seek to explain anything. It simply seeks to answer the question: "What if things were different?" In doing so, one is more able to see what the established power structures are, and to challenge those selfsame power structures.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    [dead]

taeric 3y ago

I think the point is some view debate as a way to force folks to consider views they might not fully agree with. The search for common ground was the lesson. As this story is presented, a lot of these feel like non-sequiturs. Not wrong, and not not worth discussing, but not in the spirit of the debate.

sixo 3y ago

Mmm, it's a dead-end without a philosophical framework powerful enough to contain it. It's like trying to decide how to build a system/business while also trying to work out what to build/what problem you're solving. At some point, to actually do anything, you have to pinch off the space of all possible problem requirements/business objective/etc.—not permanently, but long enough to start building! You certainly can't coordinate a large team to do it when the goal itself is changing. You have to draw a line around something and saying "we're doing this", and then focus on how to do it. In ML terms: If you don't commit to a goal for a while, then every time you encounter uncertainty in whether you're accomplishing your current goal, it will "backpropagate" to increase uncertainty in the goal itself. This can easily become unmanageable. To make any progress, you need a series of forward passes (attempting to do things) and backward passes (revising your idea of what you're trying to do.) Balancing these is a skill, and is highly contingent on what you're doing, runway, etc. Applied to debating with critical theory, this means: if you constantly cast doubt on the entire framework of modernity, you can never come up with a useful answer about any particular thing in the immediate present. Every potential harm or pain backpropagates to indict the entire system. These harms are rightly considered indictments of the system—but in the real world, unlike in a debate, you still have to act. I haven't done debate myself, but these same problems come up in internet discourse all the time, and it seems clear that you need to some equipment to handle this tendency to make any progress. What's necessary is the ability to designate "responsibility", i.e. leadership.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
I would suggest that it's a dead end without a mutually agreed upon philosophical framework to contain it. The participants in a debate are unlikely interested in agreeing to one particular framework, and this is a big part of why critical theory in other areas is such a hot-button issue: the philosophical presuppositions that critical [X] theorists want you to make are inconsistent with the worldviews of some other people (and even inconsistent with other critical theories in some instances).
ducharmdev 3y ago
I wonder if the speed/frequency of discourse has soured some of the potentially good ideas that critical theory can put forth. In college I had a deep interest in critical theory, but I recall most of my time with it spent simply thinking: reflecting on the ideas and critiquing them myself. We didn't exactly debate the ideas, either - it was more akin to collaborative analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. As you suggest, I think allowing this ebb and flow made the experience a more fruitful one.

leetcrew 3y ago

it's more that it's like showing up to a spelling bee and giving a long monologue about how the spelling of words is arbitrary and the entire competition is meaningless. you're not wrong, but you can't expect people to appreciate your derailing the event either. if you so thoroughly reject the premise of the event, why are you even participating?

whimsicalism 3y ago
> if you so thoroughly reject the premise of the event, why are you even participating? Any debater making these arguments on the affirmative side almost certainly includes an argument answering this question when they are doing it.
- tekla 3y ago
  Yep. As it turns out, people who debate k's already have well thought out answers to the knee jerk reaction arguments.
DiscourseFan 3y ago
Spelling bees are a quirk of the English language (though there are other languages with more perverse orthography see Hindi). I feel like the notion that words have a "correct" spelling, and memorizing that is turned into a competition that is often televised and broadcast and highly promoted to all middle-school students in the US, is probably political in nature. At least one should probably question why it is we even have spelling bees, the history of spelling bees, the structural questions, the constitution of the game itself as it relates to the worship of the Word (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, as they say), and the place of the Word in the organization of society. But those are only a few things you could ask. A debate student, when asked to argue about the place of spelling bees in our society, might generate these very arguments. A young student who is winning a lot of spelling bees probably wouldn't, and they'd get laughed out of the auditorium if they couldn't answer and then started arguing that spelling bees were racist or something like that. I think your point is moot.
- 3y ago

msla 3y ago

Here's where it's a dead end: > “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist... I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging... I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments... Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.” If there's no way to defend against an argument because it's Objectively Correct in the eyes of the judges, that isn't debate, it's a lecture with extra steps. It's like being able to on stage and win by screaming "SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!" and nobody being able to counter it. If this is a competition, it should outlaw winning moves that can't be countered.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
That person can have those beliefs, but they have disqualified themselves from being a judge. By their own words, they have said that they cannot and will not judge objectively. So they should be disqualified from judging.
istjohn 3y ago
True enough, but I'm not terribly impressed that the author was able to find one stupid judge statement. There are probably other judges vowing to reject kritical arguments out of hand, which is just as indefensible.
- jasmer 3y ago
  [dead]
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Not only is that judge statement not where she claimed it to be (2023 toc judge paradigms - i think she actually pulled it from past media coverage of the 2022 toc), she had to scroll incredibly far to find a paradigm incendiary like this.

vorpalhex 3y ago

We should totally disregard anyone who seriously backs critical theory and treat it the same as "Because God". A theory that can explain everything is a terrible theory and explains nothing. Responding to your critics that they don't get it because of racial ad-hominem attacks isn't a defense. Factual statements have criteria that would disprove them. There are experiments that would support a flat earth if that were an accurate reflection of reality. There is no such criteria for critical theory. Fail to find structural forces? You've simply been conditioned to ignore them. Explain away differences using a robust model? You're simply not being an ally. Critical theory is not science, it's sloppy religious nonsense.

Paul-Craft 3y ago
You miss the point. Critical theory doesn't seek to explain anything. It simply seeks to answer the question: "What if things were different?" In doing so, one is more able to see what the established power structures are, and to challenge those selfsame power structures.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  [dead]