Critiques/Kritiks

*Note: you don’t have to read the entire document to get a good understanding of these types of arguments. They go indepth on different topics in
case you would like to learn more about one of them for just for general knowledge or even to read a position about them

 Kritik format
o Link – what is the affirmative causing/doing
o Impact – why is this bad
o Alternative – what should we do instead (solve the link)
o Role of the ballot – how should the judge decide the round
 Variations of ks
o Cap k – a policy criticism that derives from marx based lit, 1ac increases or
maintains or prevenst a cap revolution, the impact is extinction, queer violence,
black violence, the alt solves the impact .(the want to stop a revolution)
 Outweighs on time frame
 Strategic in front judges who don’t like ks
 Cap ks against non-topical affs because non topical affs don’t have a very
big impact so teams will run cap k with extinction impact link can’t perm
and then outweigh on impact
 Format
 Link – the aff is complicit within capitalist structures
 Impact – a) environmental degradation (extinction) b) root cause of
the aff’s impact (cap is root cause of queer violence/black
violence/etc)
o Root cause args are the strongest, doesn’t only say that neg
solves case but also that the aff doesn’t solve
 Alt – communist revolution
 The cap k is based on materialism
 idealism and materalism
o do ideas shape material world or does material world shape
our ideas?
o Ex. Oppression is a social construct, certain bodies are
outside of the social structure because of how the structure
is (this is idealism of oppression)
o Material structures of when men went to war and women
got jobs affected our ideal structures of gender equality
o Biopower – the idea that someone watching them shapes
the material world of them and so they acted and took care
of themselves
o Pessimism ks
 We should be not optimistic, we should deal with how things are and be
negative about the world
 Derived from several subjects and is more recent
  Teams will make a claim abt a certain identity and how that subject is
either not a subject or derive from a psychoanalytical idea of how they
treat people (a static identity or ontology)
 Majority of the pressure is about the onolotgy or ‘being’ debate bc if you
win you impact turn the aff
 With pess ks you want to disprove the power and prove that the world can
become better
 Summary: Any structural gain that the aff makes imposes violence on the
world of the neg (it is a cycle, structural gain turns into pain)
 Format
 Ontology/impact – why a particular body is “outside of civil
society” or outside of the possibility of progress
 Link – why the aff is complicit in hope, change, the future
 Alt – reject optimism – engage in pessimism
 If you want to win you have to win the ontology!!
 On pess ks strategy’s show that the way to beat them is by
spending most time on the ontology/impact arg
 Idealism – there is a symbolic structure that stops material structures that
will help oppressed people
 To win if you have a materialistic aff win that materialism is better
then idealism or win that pessimism is a materialistic structure
 Ex. Afropess, queerpess, ecopess (however ecopess is materialism as they
don’t have ideas that keep them outside of society and we can’t say why
humans are better then the ecosystem this is just scientific facts there is no
hope for the environment)
 Alt says that there is no hope to fix these issues
 Solvency is that this is how things will always be and we have to
recognize the problem not necessarily fix it because it is not possible to fix
the problem. The problem is not recognizing the probelm
o Representative ks
 Policy rep ks – things like security, apok k – criticking the representation
(aff justifies their plan in order to justify their plan, impact: justifying their
plan through extinction but this allows for citizens to be in fear and not do
anything, alt is that we shouldn’t do it because of extinction but because of
global warming or something less severe. The extinction puts it in a bad
spot), holocaust k (do the aff plan because otherwise there will be another
holocaust, they say that this is bad because they are basically just using the
holocaust to win)
 Security k is a criticism of big stick impacts are a tool used by
federal agencies to keep citizens docile and prevent action
o Lit says that it prevents action from happening and allows
for things to go unchecked (like fascism)
 o Security k alone will lose but coupled with k defense it will
always win
o Have to go for case defense – show that the threats are real
or not as bad as they are seen to be
o Policy judges like it
 Format
o Link – the aff’s extinction or preventing terrorism etc
creates a threat construction (like extinction or terrorism)
o Impact – creating threat construction or political paralysis
or self profiling prophecy
 The US believed threats about Russia which then
makes Russia aggressive towards us (because it
wasn’t true)
o Alt – reject securitization
o Role of the ballot – representatives first, why the k should
come first before the plan
 Word pik (do the k except for a small portion)/Words in the res (topic
specific) – critize words in the resolution such as “personhood” “grant” or
“natural”
 Critize personhood because it is applying humanistic rights to
nature
o Critize legal personhood to legal standing
 Granting assumes that the natural environment didn’t have the
right in the first place, so instead of granting it you should
recognize it. Granting says that the environment never had the
right but recognizing it would say that it has already been there
o Kant aff - that the environment has intrinsic value
therefore the advocacy is to grant it a write. The pic says
that if the environment has intrinsic value to grant it would
mean that they never had the right in the first place. But if
the environment always had intrinsic value then the rez
should say “recognize “ the right
o Turns aff that the environment is intrinsically value
 Natural makes it more non-human just “… to ecosystems”
 Benefit of these are that they solve the aff almost 100%
 Discouses ks – pronouns, or if evidence says “men” to represent all
humans, if women has the word men in it is bad and should be spelled
womxn
 Critique a word that was said by opponent
 The discourse k comes first because it is pre-fiat
 Start the debate by using gender neutral pronouns – always call
them they, them unless otherwise stated
  If you are running this then weigh it saying that the ballot can’t
solve the Aff impact but can be used as a punishment to debaters
who use the wrong rhetoric
o Response the aff should be able to weigh the entirety of the
aff and by saying it is pre-fiat you are separating the
impacts and representations
o All I have said in this round is attached to my impacts. It is
impossible to imagine that my rhetoric is not connected to
my impacts. Just separating them doesn’t make sense
because when you defend those words you get the impacts
so should as well
 Format is different and don’t have an alt because they don’t want
you to use another world but rather just get punished
 Doesn’t have to be long, can be read in the 2ar, judges will vote for
it easily
 Framework ks –how the aff framework is read
 Criticize a part of the frmk and how it is read
 If a kant aff is about universal ethics the fw k would say that
universal ethics are oppressive not the fact that kant is oppressive
 Not criticizing the advocacy but the framework
o You should lose because your framework is bad
 A criticism of the framework and why it is bad
 Response:
o What is the link to my advocacy?
o Why do I have to defend my framework? Why can’t I use
your framework?
 More effectively: attack a link to the framework attached to
another k
o High theory ks
 Similar to pess as they have a theory of how the subject looks like but they
aren’t pess abt the world although they begain with that analysis
 Format
 subject formation coupled with the impact - why the opposite form
results in a bad view of the world
 link – why the aff replicates the wrong form of analysis which
leads to a problem
 might have an impact now or earlier
 alt – the correct view of how the subject is constructed
 Variations
 semiocapitalism – they have a view that labor is no longer
material, labor used to be manual but has transcended into
 cognitive in which we are dominated by info economy/labor. We
have more info jobs like computer programmers, etc
o in the past, disabled people could not work because it was
manual labor but now that we have shifted towards an info
labor it allows disabled people to work in places like the
call centers
o format
 subject formation - semiocap
 link – aff contributes to the info economy
 impact – why semiocap is bad
 alienation, extinction, root cause
 alt – something that withdraws from semicap so
sacrifice and withdrawal
o this is high theory because the subject formation of why
society is structured this way is much more indepth and
comes to clash with other ks such as afropess says that
certain bodies are excluded from society but semiocap says
that the society is based on info economy through
modernization
 Strategy
o 1AR on K
 Let the aff weigh the case
 Fairness not letting us weigh the case means 6 minutes of 1ar
offense
 Epistemology that our respresentation is tied to impacts but if you
separate them that doesn’t make sense
 If you win this then,
o Extinction outweighs any form of violence
o And can use as a net benefit to the k
 Make perms
 Important bc they are a test of competition
 The aff can’t access the net benefit that the neg makes if you don’t
make a perm
 Impact calculus
 Impact defense
 Answer the impact
 Usually the impact is not heavily pressured besides cap k
 Address link
 Link turn first because then you can access opponents impacts
 No link/non-unique are important depending on k. k like cap with
big impacts you can escape the big impacts by saying/explaining
why they don’t link to your case
 1AR theory
 Big alts bad
 Role of the ballot specs
 Must spec status of alt
 Must be policy option
 AT framework k
o Interp the negative may only derive links to the
affirmative’s advocacy - to clarify, they may not read links
to our framework
o Standards:
 Limits – read don’t read a kant aff if it doesn’t
affirm. We don’t force our philosophies. The aff is
limited because they have to pick on that fits under
the rez but if the neg just has to disprove the aff and
not fit the resolution it creates an explosion of limits
as the aff has to argue against any framework. The
neg can pick any framework against the aff’s that
doesn’t have to even follow the rez
 (can change out for time skew if you want)
Reciprocity – the 1AC has to defend that their
framework is good and that it is better then the
negs/fits the rez the aff has two burdens but if the
neg reads a framework k then they only have one
burden which is to disprove the affs
 Materialism – under their interp even if they are
advocating for kant is oppressive or whatever they
are more oppressive as they are stuck in philosophy
and never talk about material changes or even agree
with them that your framework is bad but they are
just staying in their ivory tower. Only kritik the aff
and don’t let them agree that their framework is
bad. They don’t allow them to debate the advocacy
 Time skew – the aff spent 2/3 minutes justifying
and 2/3 minutes on contention. If the 1NC was just
7 minutes of framework bad this is time skew
because there is no way the AC would win on
framework because they also had to read
contentions in the first speech that the neg ends up
not arguing.
 Aff flex – severance good claim, puts an unfair
burden on me
 Clash /Topic education – you don’t actually clash
about the resolution but just argue abt the
 framework. B just attacking the framework we
don’t actually learn about the topic and learn more
information about it. All we do is learn about the
same framework even though we already have a
basic understanding of it from me reading it
 Ground – the neg gets to cherry pick which
framework they can use and then use that against
the aff. It positions the aff in an awkward way
 Theory of power
 How the world is constructed, how structures are constructed, etc
 In afropess there are articles that detest afropess
 The winner is chosen through impact calculus or by deciding whos
theory is power is the best or who wins the perm
 Reading topicality
 performative contradictions (perf con) are bad because they allow
for commodification of the ballot
 make sure to impact it out to fairness, education, and their role of
the ballot
 some kritiks should not be read with topicality
o t + pess
 perf cons
 contradict because theory is based on
fairness and the whole arg from pess is that
some are excluded and are not fair. They are
misviewing it as equality
 this criticism is one of the state but the t says
that you should be political
o t + high theory (deluze, semiocap)
 you can read t + cap, t + word piks, or t + rep ks
 performative contradictions
o white people reading afro pess
o people of a different race reading a k of a African Americas
or Hispanics
 best strategy t + k + turns
 Time allocations
 Weigh the case
 Permutations
 Theory of power

pre-fiat – before the plan passes

post-fiat = world of the plan and hypothetical world
 Identity politics
o A certain type of category has been excluded
 Gender, religion, race, etc
o The politics of inclusion is when the state includes that identity through its sphere
 Expand our sphere in order to have groups not be excluded
 If the state first thought that men was just biological then the state
expanded it to biological, social, and self-identifying
 But the problem is that even if you expand you still are against and
identify against what you are not to something else
 Ultimelty supported by politics of exclusion
o The power of difference
 Each individual is an example of the definition – there is no singular or
one definition
o Identity is formulated an oppositional analysis
 I have these identities because I know what I am not
o I identify myself with a group in order to identify against another group
o Legal personhood expands our definition (was extended through women, babies,
fetuses)
 Root cause claim: as we are expanding our definition we just set up a new
border to identify against
 Everything is emergent fluid process