Maurer-Stategic Negative Diversity

7/27/2019 Maurer-Stategic Negative Diversity

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STRATEGIC DIVERSITY AND THE KMAURER

Strategic Negative Diversity and the K

Techniques for Maximizing Tactical Flexibility When Running Kritiks

This lecture is intended to provide you with some practices for maximizing strategic potential of the kritik

with both horizontal and vertical diversity. We will discuss three phases of competition: Research, Filing,

and Deployment and Execution.

Argument diversity creates tactical flexibility and tactical flexibility wins debates.

A. Research

1. Research Kritiks that Answer each other (ID politics good and bad, Psychoanalysis and Post-structural

objections, Deontology/consequentialism and Niestchze). Although it seems limitless sometimes, the

number of authors, schools, and theoretical perspectives one can approach from to win a debate are finite.

If you only have a cap good file and people you debate a lot figure it out, they will continue to force you to

say its bad and you will lose. However, if you are prepared for both sides of the debate, you can prey on

your opponents weaknesses, taking them off of their good files/blocks and out of their comfort zone.

2. Research answers to each main K author that are valid regardless of the context that author is being readin. Many kritik authors, like Zizek, can be read in several different contexts and to make different types of

arguments (demands=metaphoric condensation OR do nothing to completely withdraw from capital).

Thus, it is important that you answers that target the authors theory in general, regardless of its application.

Here is an in-exhaustive list of authors you should have such answers for: Agamben, Badiou, Hardt and

Negri, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietschze, Zizek, and psychoanalysis in general.

3. Research and learn topicality or some theory argument. It will be necessary for you to be able to win on

something other than your kritik if you are to make it a durable strategy. Topicality or other theoryarguments are typically the most manageable option because if you decide not to go for the K in the 2NR,

going for a counterplan and a disad requires you to do more work kicking out of the kritik and gives the

affirmative the ability to go for theory on the K to trump your other arguments. Topicality is better

because if you opt-out of the K in the 2NR you dont have to worry to much about the substantive debate

and you have a built-in answer to their theoretical objections to the K. It also makes this strategy moreeffective if your topicality argument forces them to link to you kritik (e.g. Public Health Assistance

Topicality and a Medicalization K).

B. Filing

1. Have a Utility K File. There are some critical arguments that are smaller and dont need their own file

but, nevertheless, will be used a lot. Instead of scattering these kritiks amongst your tubs, put them in one

place (an expando). Files that should go into this type of expando fall into three categories.

a. Ethics/Morality Arguments. deontology, utilitarianism, ontology precedes ethics, ethics

precede ontology, yes/no infinite obligation to the other, nuclear war o/w all, genocide o/w all, racism o/w

all, sexism o/w all, etc.

b. Kritiks of Impacts. Cato, nuclearism, Cuomo, threat construction, terror talk, environmentalsecuritization, regular securitization. Note: if the way you debate demands much more use out of these

positions, dont take my advice to literally here and try to pack your favorite 300-page terror talk file into

pocket C.

c. Kritiks of Theory Arguments. Who knows when youll get caught in a mistake or trap and

have to make theory arguments not matter. Small kritiks like jurisdiction justified native American

genocide can get you out of a pinch sometimes.


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2. Have a Bad Words File. There are a lot of words that there are kritiks of using. Accumulate as many asyou can and put them in one expando. Being familiar with as many of them as possible gives you the

opportunity to:

a. PIC out of those words if they appear in plans.

b. Opportunistically generate offense when a team says them.

Beating just a few teams on such arguments will present two tactical advantages:

a. Pre-round preparation. If your opponents coaches spend 30 minutes before the debate

searching for every scrap of gendered language in their evidence and not writing answers to your mainlinekritik, your odds of winning increase.

b. Opponents psychology. During speeches it is important for debaters to be confident and speak

swiftly. If your opponents are tip-toeing around 32 bad words, their head is less in the game than yours.

3. Have stock Ks of non-traditional affs. Do not assume everyone will run a policy aff on you when you

prepare your negative K strategies. You need to have at least one argument that can answer non-traditional

affirmatives. Hip-hop bad is insufficient. Authors like Paul Mann, Thomas Frank, and Slovaj Zizek

write scathing criticisms of radical leftist politics and present a much more comprehensive strategy against

non-traditional affs.

4. File overviews and link arguments after rounds. Do not throw away blocks written before and during

the debate. Develop a system for filing them. If you write specific overviews to affs, leave a pocket open

in your expando called overviews and space below it on the index. Label your overviews, put them in

that pocket, and write on the index the name of the team it was prepared against. This allows you to focus

prep-time in subsequent debates against those teams on other issues/blocks.

C. Deployment and Execution

1. Link-Impact Pod. Virtually any kritik can be read without its alternative as an ethical disad. There

are a couple ways of doing this with different rationales for each.

a. Off-case (the distraction). Running a kritik without the alternative avoids most theoreticalliabilities typically associated with running kritiks (floating PICs, vague alt, framework, etc.). Affirmatives

typically treat Off-case positions with more credence. Thus, an ethics DA of, for example, that the aff is

realist and that leads to extinction, presents little strategic liability for the negative and usually attracts moreaffirmative attention than it is worth. Its balance positive for negative tactical flexibility. The downside, of

course, is that going for it in the 2NR means you have no way of accessing the affirmative case other than

parallel impacts.

b. On-case (crouching tiger). Again, no theoretical liabilities and it (generally) decreases

affirmative attention to the argument. Block execution of this type of deployment can consist of a 1NR

only taking the argument and reading many cards (more links and impacts) on the argument in the block.

A semi-shady trick to pull is to sneak and alternative card (of a particular type) into the extension. Some

kritiks have rejection good style alternative evidence that can be described as a de facto characteristic of

a negative ballot. In other words, the judge voting negative doesnt mean that the 1AC just never

happened: it means they rejected it for a specific reason and if that reason is productive in some way, wedont need an alternative to claim that it is a good action to take. Or you can attempt to sneak in the

argument that we can advocate the aff except for the realist rhetoric. Warning: this strategy may seem

fun but savvy 1ARs will pre-empt this attempted side-step (e.g. the productive-rejection argument,

advocate aff minus link) and dump mucho theory on the new alt, making the 2NR really, really hard. Dont

say I didnt warn you.

2. One of Many Off-case (w/alt). This can be an effective way to put pressure on a 2AC because it makes

them initiate many arguments (framework, perms, alternative answers, solvency deficits to the alt) simply


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to protect themselves against your ability to expand the kritik in the block. And you can; for all 13 minutesif 2AC answers suck. Two major drawbacks to this deployment:

a. New 1AR Arguments. Since the shell is skeletal, much of the block will have to be spent

reading more evidence and new arguments, justifying many new 1AR answers. If you are smart about

reading pre-emptive arguments in the block to what the 1AR will probably say and avoid redundancy, the

time advantage of the block can overcome this set-back.b. Theory. Especially if you read a counterplan. With an alt and a counterplan in the debate, you

functionally have multiple advocacies and smart affirmatives will use this to expand the magnitude of their

theory impacts. The best way around this, I think, is to assign different levels of priority to evaluating thedebate. The negative strategy is to criticize the affirmatives ontology/epistemology/rhetoric. If the

affirmative justifies their approach to debate, they still lose at their game because of the counterplan and

disad. Assigning different levels of priority based on an if-then logic is exactly similar to what the

affirmative does when no linking and impact turning a disad: the disad doesnt link but if it does, the

impact is good. Similarly, the affirmatives approach to the debate round is ontologically problematic but

if its not, the case is net disadvantageous versus a competitive alternative. This theory argument isnt

perfect and this whole deployment will necessitate, at least, a heavier time investment in theory argument

than normal.

3. One Off. With this strategy, the negative is in little theoretical trouble unless their alt is shifty andvague. However, maximizing argument diversity and tactical flexibility becomes a priority because the

affirmative knows what your going for when the 1NC is over. Here are a few ways to preserve tactical

flexibility despite the lack of horizontal diversity.

a. Pre-Empts. Instead of reading that gigantic answer to the permutation you normally read in the

block, read it in the 1NC. Likewise, any cards you usually end up reading the block, read in the 1NC (with

the exception of cards that it is beneficial to sandbag for the block, e.g. an impact card with a built-in

method for evaluation: extinction scenarios dont matter but Biopower does). Doing this allows the block

to cut-through many 2AC answers with only analytical explanations of evidence already read. However,dont just say cross-apply our pre-empt and move on: use the block to compare and expand on evidence

youve read by extracting and wielding its warrants.

b. Make a Prompt Sheet. Most kritiks have evidence with multiple uses like alternative cards that

answer permutations or link cards with impact arguments. A prompt sheet is one sheet of paper that has

warrants from a variety of cards used to keep track of them so that no warrant goes un-used (you can alsouse these for 1ACs).

c. Read Supportive Case Turns to Animate Link and Impact Arguments. Just because your case-

turn authors write policy cards and your kritik authors write kritik cards doesnt mean that they dontsee eye-to-eye on some practical problems that certain policies run into.

4. Satellite Kritiks. If you run one large off-case kritik, you can also deploy smaller satellite kritiks on

the case that the alternative solves. If, for example, you read a medicalization/Foucault kritik off-case, you

can read a terror-talk kritik on case (without the alt) to answer the terrorism advantage. What makes this

strategy tricky for affs is when you ensure with arguments that:

a. The Alt Solves the Satellite Kritik. In the above example, one may make an argument that the

using terror-talk is an inherently biopolitical practice that the alternative, since it addresses the issue of

biopolitics would solve.

b. The Aff Link Offense/Turns Do Not Answer the Off-Case Kritik. You need to make the on-case kritik one-way valves so that they are not liabilities for the core kritik but can become assests if

mishandled.

D. DONT:

1. Run multiple kritiks with multiple alternatives.

2. Run contradictory kritiks.

3. Run truly generic kritiks e.g. make your generic links specific with detailed link arguments.4. Fail to answer all of the advantages.

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Maurer-Stategic Negative Diversity