Performance Debate!

If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

- Emma Goldman

What is Performance Debate?• Challenge to the Form and/or Content of

Normative Policy Debate.

• BETTER QUESTION: WHAT IS NORMATIVE POLICY DEBATE? – Highly Research Based (Objective, Expert) – Minutia (Flowing, Detailed organization, Dropped

arguments) – 3rd Party Oriented: Judge – Competitive– Constrained: Aff, Neg, Resolution – Refutation

Primarily 2 campsCamp: Modernism!

- Identity Politics - Cap Bad Judge- Existentialism

Is there a material reality? Yes.

Is there such thing as Truth? Yes/No little truths

Camp: PoMo- Nihilists (Not in Name) - Deconstructionists - Queers

Is there a Material reality? No. Language

Is there such thing as Truth? No – Violent

The Performance Motto

DO NOT DO WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN

DONE

In the Beginning…Narrative

- Fiction

- Telling Experience

- Showing Experience

What we learned? Competition makes debate a judgment on the self. When the personal is political, debate can be painful for everyone.

Fort Hays

• Taking on the Grid! – What we learned? The flow isn’t as important as we

think. Functionally answered arguments count. Minutia is silly.

• Topicality is Genocide – What we learned? Kritiking T – We make violent

structures in our language. We discipline and do violence to ourselves and others. Debate rounds matter to violence in the world.

Identity Politics• Treaties/CEDAW/Topic Committee –

– What we learned: It’s our resolution & our community.

• Language Barriers – - What we learned: We overlook some of the simplest

things.

• Increasing Meaningful Participation – What we learned: There’s a place for you too!– Towson: Take a tough line.

The Medium is the Message• Poetry

– Human Agency • What we learned? Roland Bleiker taught us we can dissent

even in realms that we don’t expect.

• Hip Hop – Louisville: Identity, Purpose, Method

• What we learned? Simplicity & the organic intellectual – challenging evidence

– Long Beach: Hip Hop as Culture • What we learned? Doing is better than saying

Deference• Nihilism ala Bard

– What we learned: Nihilists often don’t call themselves nihilists or defend Nietzsche

• WGLF: – What we learned: Must differentiate ass clowns from

serious argument. There was always an argument amongst the jokes & the jokes were also a K.

• Idaho State – What we learned: Make your argument early and

know they will K that shit!