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Just whining about the meta. > When debaters reject the topic and advocate for these critical theories, they choose not to engage in pragmatic policy discussio
by yk 3y ago
Just whining about the meta.
> When debaters reject the topic and advocate for these critical theories, they choose not to engage in pragmatic policy discussions.
Well, they choose some strategy to generate debate entries, namely theoretical sophistication, instead of whatever pragmatic means. (Usually it just means "My position is really great and I don't want to think about alternatives," but perhaps there is a specific technical meaning here.)
> Even if they’re not advocating for kritiks, in order to succeed at the national level, debaters have to learn how to respond critical theory arguments without actually disagreeing with their radical principles.
That is just saying, to compete on a high level people have to play the game well.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoI would struggle with the game. Not because of the topics, but because of the sesquipedalian nature of the responses (e.g. the example responses in the article). My response would be "can you please ELI5 that so you stop wasting our time unnecessarily.
- ang_cire 3y agoYou wouldn't struggle if you did policy debate, though, because part of it is preparing for these arguments. There are literally tons of arguments in policy debate to run against Ks which (mis)use Critical Literature terms to create an Alt that doesn't actually solve for the K.