How to Run a Kritik Affirmative Alex McVey

How to Run a Kritik Affirmative
Alex McVey
K affs – Cheating?!
 May or may not be cheating
 Which may or may not be OK –
the rules of debate are up for
debate!
 No one kritik is alike
 Kritiks on the aff may or may not
be related to the topic, they may or
may not have a plan
 Debate is a persuasive activity.
There are some persuasive reasons
why you should have to have a
topical, fiated, USFG plan, but
there are also some persuasive
reasons why you may not need one.
Flavors of K affs
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Topical, Fiated, USFG plantext with critical advantage areas
Has a plantext, but may not defend its literal impelmentation
Resolution as a metaphor
Passive voice
No plantext, but related to the resolution
No plantext, not related to the resolution
 Performance
 High Theory
 A mix of the two
 How close you are to the resolution helps determine how you will
answer framework
Go all in
 Usually, teams who try to play the middle of the road have a
hard time:
 Plans can be easily defeated on a slew of new/tiny counterplans
with small but substantial net benefits.
 Or teams will go the other way and use the K literature you
read against you, PICS out of the plan, floating PIK’s etc…
 Inconsistent literature bases
 If you have a K aff with a plan, you have to get in depth on
the plan’s function
 If you’re going to “cheat”, cheat!
Make an argument*
 Remember – people like debate because it is an activity that
engages in controversial political questions with
argumentative insight and pointed analysis.
 Avoid obfuscation for obfuscation’s sake.
 Note: Frequently, K affs will avoid telling the entire story of
their argument in the 1ac. (Deferral) This is not the same as
not making an argument. Enthymeme is an argument with an
unstated premise.
The Stock Issues
 Good critical affirmatives will usually fall under the basic
argumentative norms of the stock issues paradigm.
 Inherency: Prove that there is currently a certain assumption,
discourse, debate practice, cultural text, norm, way of
interpreting the resolution, etc… that is problematic
 Harms: Explain why it is problematic
 Solvency: Propose a critical method of
analysis/evaluation/performance that resolves, moves beyond,
challenges, or critiques the assumption that you find to be
problematic.
Role of the ballot
 A good critical aff will tell the judge what the role of their
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ballot is,
The role of the ballot shapes how you respond to / how the
judge should interpret every argument
A good role of the ballot should deal with both questions of
method and questions of impacts.
A good role of the ballot should tell the judge what matters,
and what does not matter.
You must be prepared to weigh between/against competing
roles of the ballot
80 % of your prelim debates
T/Framework
Cap
How to debate against framework
 Will depend on your relationship to the resolution
 If you defend a topical plan, make framework a T question and
apply your K’s as reasons to prefer.
 If you don’t have a plan but are related to the resolution, you may
want to try to play some defense to their topic education claims.
 If you are entirely unrelated to the resolution, you probably want
to impact turn their topic education claims
 Kritik their specific standards/evidence – have a diverse set of 2ac
FW kritiks so you can adapt to diverse flavors of FW.
How to debate against FW part 2
 You should probably have either
 a compelling list of things they can say against your aff
 A compelling impact turn to the idea of predictability and ground
 Your framework should be intimately tied to your role of the
ballot.
 Debate framework like a disad/counterplan – what are the
relative impact/solvency claims for each team’s framework?
 Be prepared to invest substantial time in the framework debate –
remember, usually if you win your role of the ballot you will tend
to win the debate.
The Debate about Debate
 Debate as an activity has serious diversity issues:
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underrepresentation of women and people of color both as
debaters and as coaches/judges.
The kritik of universality / the view from nowhere
Debates about inclusion/accessibility in the debate space
Debates about the performativity/style of debate
Debates about identity
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Race
Sex
Gender
Class
Intersections
Know your stuff
 Defending a critical aff will require an immense depth of
knowledge of the literature base surrounding your
argument/philosophy
 You should be constantly reading new journal articles about
your argument
 Nothing is worse than someone who doesn’t know what
they’re talking about trying to BS about critical literature –
you’ll sound ignorant and will probably double turn yourself.
 Know the literature – know the critiques of your theory and
your theory’s deep application.
Practice CX
 Especially when first developing a critical aff, it is important
to practice CX
 30 minute CX drills with a coach are a good idea, especially
if that coach isn’t familiar with critical literature.
 Have an answer to the question “why vote affirmative”
 Be prepared to give examples
Bring your voice to the debate
 The best critical affs are ones that the debaters care deeply
about
 Dive in! There is an immense amount of critical/cultural
literature out there to learn from. Start your journey and you
never know where you’ll end up.
 Be passionate. We kritik because it matters.
 Be open to learning.
Some random ideas for critical aff
areas specific topic
 Guantanamo Bay
 Ciudad Juarez
 Cartography/Borders K (Michael J. Shapiro, Gregory Tuathail, Derek
Gregory)
 Cuban embargo
 State of Exception (Agamben)
 Imperialism
 as a metaphor for gated communities / Segregation
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Antiblackness (Wilderson, Sexton) – Cuban Slavery
Chicana Cultural Theory (Anzaldua)
Decoloniality
Communism
War on Drugs
Debating Against Kritikal Affs – When
to run framework
 Do they have a plan? If so – you better have a specific T argument
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before getting into a framework debate.
If they don’t have a plan, and you don’t have a stock kritik to go
for against their aff, framework is a good option for the 1nc.
If you have a kritik or a case argument to make against the aff,
most judges would prefer to hear that over a framework debate…
But don’t run away from framework – use it strategically
Use framework to get strategic concessions for arguments on
other flows
Debating FW against a K aff
 Establish a clear violation and a clear interpretation of your role of
the ballot.
 Make the standards turn the case (stasis, agonism,
democracy/deliberation/dialogue key to check abusive power of
state/capitalism)
 Substantiate the impact to fairness and education – Testability,
portable skills, limits, switch side debate.
 Either –
 A. There’s a Topical version of the aff
 B.You can do it on the neg.
 Think of these like counterplans that solve their offense to framework.
Have a stock Kritik vs K affs
 Cap (Historical Materialism)
 Anthropocentrism
 Baudrillard
 Nietzsche
 K’s of impacts
 Method/Performance K’s
 Either go One Off or make
sure you have an explanation
for any contradictions.
Have a big case debate
 Should include: Impact turns, impact framing arguments,
author/philosophy indicts
 Impact turns – they say cap bad, you say cap good.
 Usually not wise with identity based arguments, i/e DON’T SAY
RACISM/SEXISM GOOD!
 However, it IS ok to say that identity politics, personal politics, body politics,
etc… are all bad.
 Impact framing – Always Value to Life, Extinction impacts first, Util
good, Predictions good, Security good
 Indicts –criticisms of the aff’s author or branch of philosophy –
frequently can be found in book reviews!
 It is hard for K affs to answer a diverse 1nc with a big case debate.
Chances are they will either undercover framework or drop something
important on case.