Debate and Theory

Peter Gratton over at Philosophy in a Time of Error has an extremely interesting post on K debaters. From his just surface knowledge of the activity by way of interaction from people who used to be/are in the activity he has the practice of K debate pinned down. For example:

"...as I understand it, is that the Continental approach is mostly used by under-dog teams taking on rich East Coast private high schools. Need to take on realist accounts of nuclear proliferation? Counter with a post-colonial critique of the creation of the global south or a feminist critique of phallo-centrism as represented in the use of missile technology (I’m not making either of these up). Apparently, it throws off the better profile teams used to more standard counterarguments, which seems to match Continental’s role in the academy in general."

I would also add to the discussion that the use of theory is not only strategically used by these "under-dog" teams but also because many of these team gravitate towards this style out of necessity (the catching people off guard is just a bonus). "Rich East Coast private high schools" are not just found on the east coast but everywhere, and they are the teams to beat. Policy debate (where teams argue in the traditional means about the desirability of policy actions) requires massive amounts of resources from high capacity printers, massive amounts of paper, large coaching staff, travel expenses, etc. These larger programs are also able to sustain large squads that can be mobilized for high amount of research production. Due to these structural advantages these larger schools are able to excel at the traditional policy style debating because they have the time and woman power. This is because they are able to stay current on research and produce enough evidence to cover all angles and arguments that are involved in a policy debate.

Because of all this teams/debaters from schools that have a small (or functionally non-existent) team need to find ways to be able to have a debate strategy they will have time to manage and research all by themselves as well as keep on top of their school  and life requirements. These easy to maintain strategies normally manifest themselves as the K (critique). A debater will find one author/critical position that they might find interesting (I myself did this with Nietzsche and later Baudrillard) and then do all the research they can possible do to understand that position inside and out, once that is done these debaters are able to go to bat against the best policy teams in the nation with relative success.

The other interesting part of Peter's post was that he was interested in ways that theory can be made more accessible to debaters:

I’m on the SPEP advocacy commitee the next couple of years so this seems like this would be an area where one could advocate for Continental in a certain way, but I’m not sure how: by putting Continental in touch with debate prep coaches? By leading some of these students into Continental friendly programs?

 I thought of a few suggestions myself for how organizations like SPEP could reach out to debaters:

1. Instead of reaching out to coaches, reach out to the debaters- set up a program where debaters who are interested in theory can get help/advice/direction in their research/thought. This could be done by organized web chats or Q&As where debaters can ask questions to be answered by somebody versed in Continental. Or set a "database" where you provide the emails of certain people who are experts in separate fields that so that they can be contacted, this can be broken up by school of thought or by knowledge of figure head type authors (Heidegger, Deleuze, Baudrillard, etc.). Once this is done THEN contact debate coaches and debate discussion boards.

2. Tell us how - Offer information on how to/where to do theory after high school. Many "k debaters" want to go to college and do/study Continental Philosophy but they are not quite sure how exactly to accomplish this. Do they go into the philosophy department, the english department, sociology,cultural studies, anthropology, political science? Sadly there is really no Critical Theory department, so providing information about issues such as this would probably increase the "recruitment" of high school debaters to Continental.

3. Dazzle them - This somewhat jives with #1 but i think deserves its own- Critical debaters are always amazed by great, interesting, applied thought - and this amazement doubles when it can be used by them. Maybe have a group of disparate Continental authors take the current high school topic and have each write a short essay or use it as a starting point to levy a critique/explain their own theoretical positions, give the collection away by having students email one address. Then SPEP has a mailing list of (elated) high schoolers interested in Continental thought.

This is all I got for now, but if anyone reading this blog has suggestions of their own I highly encourage you to post them in the comments here and/or at the post I linked up top.

Knowledge Distorted by the Masses

This post is essentially going to be a rant/pseudo-criticism of our society in general. Let me start by posing a question: What drives the masses? While there may be no "correct" answer, I'm certainly inclined to respond with "fear", and while I've always known that. It just became painfully apparent to me recently.

How many times have you heard someone just say something along the lines of "We should nuke North Korea!", with the warrant nearly always being a deep fear of them destroying something held dear to them. It does not matter what empirical evidence would typically lead us to believe, fear generally triumphs over logic the vast majority of times.

My question: Why?

At first sight I believe it has something to do with the fact that people think that they actually do have the empirical evidence, usually because someone unqualified to inform them on the situation did so. That seems to be a huge problem with our society, everyone is an expert. And of course, when everyone is an expert, nobody is an expert. The worst thing to be in a society full of experts is an actual expert.

Gilles Deleuze and others make the argument that liberalism needs its subjects to be fearful, so it produces that fear, thus we come to desire our own domination and accept it as an inevitable sacrifice to protect us from the 'evils' of the world. This can be repeatedly seen throughout history, yet no one ever learns. The most notable recently being George Bush's "Patriot Act" followed by the subsequent declaration of the "Axis of Evil".

I'd say it's a safe conclusion that both of those are certainly contributing factors as to why fear dominates logic. It is both perceived as true, and the masses desire it. It's an effective tool to cajole previously unwilling subjects to bend to the whims of a system. This fear mongering and (as a result) inherently xenophobic society hasn't been as much of a threat until lately. With escalating conflicts around the globe and a population yelling "Nuke them!", you have to wonder when the people fueling that fear will give in to the resulting demand.

As I said previously, this was simply a quick rant on a comment I heard today, and I just wanted to get some thoughts out here as this is certainly only the starting point of this conversation. Why does fear triumph logic? What do you think?

Thoughts on "Doing Revolution"

Adam mentions in Occupied that it is not enough to just talk about revolution but to enact it. I find this concept interesting, but i don't think the acts of discussion and "talking" is mutually exclusive with political praxis. Rather thought and action are both symbiotic forms that play with each other, taking and borrowing from each other, to create spirals that we call critique. I think the school Occupation movements last year (UC, New School, etc.) are a great example of this, not only was thought necessary to shed light on and  organize dissent against the budget cuts and war profiting that galvanized the student movements but to spread this movement. The students did not just "make revolution" by occuping the buildings - it's of value to note one of the first things that the student coalitions did once the doors and halls were barricaded was "think". They produced manifestos, websites (included with how to guides), and theory relating to what they were doing. Their praxis was not only generated by thought but was a catalyst of an entire intellectual movement based on the ideas of what it means to occupy and challenge dominant power structures.

Thought is not only valuable to give context to movements but also to generate solidarity between movements. The literature and reports generated by the students that were part of the student movements all became a part of a resonance machine that spread occupation across California like a wildfire (irony not intended). Situating our thought on resistance is key to connecting our social action of creating counter-hegemonic ideologies (doing-thought) with not only the current social actions of others that are building barricades, beating back riot police, and planting urban gardens (doing-action) but future movements like those that are still festering under the surface (like Egypt a few weeks ago) of a pacified status-quo. This resonance between doing-thought and doing-action are both equally important actions of doing-revolution. Like a  Briggs-Raucher reaction the fluid mode of revolution is in constant oscillation between different poles of doing-thought and doing-action but it never stops being revolution.