Why do tournament debate people keep saying this weird thing?
Framing and phrasing is a wonderful way to avoid making justification for thought, action, and process.
My favorite is how intercollegiate and tournament-debaters and their “teachers” use the phrase “The Activity” to describe tournament debating.
Debates are not tournaments. Tournaments are not the only or even the best way to teach debating. They might be the worst. Tournaments are the procrustean bed that the norms and principles of debating as a human discourse are dismembered and placed into.
Since there is a distinction, a strong one, between what we might call debate outside the tournament model and debate that occurrs in literally any other place (classrooms, meetings, society) tournament-stands call debate, “The Activity.”
It’s weirdly distopian. It has post-apocalyptic, sci-fi vibes. But they really can’t say anything else about it due to the recalcitrance of language.
Community doesn’t fit – there’s no debate community. There are self-serving people trying to win by whatever means they can find. One of those means is to invoke “the debate community” when it feels convenient; when they want something that will provide an advantage to their teams in a tournament competition. “the debate community” and “the activity” are the unwritten constitution of standard practices that all “good” debaters should follow.
Tournament debate is not an art: THere are fixed practices that must be followed. Tournament debate is not a method: When we are successful at a tournament, nothing new comes out of it. The only surprises are the errors the judges make. The revalation of unfamiliarity with how “the activity” should go is the only insight. When you talk to people who have been successful at winning tournaments and ask them advice for how to win, they all have the same response: get gud bro. This response is unironic, which distinguishes it from the gaming community a bit. If the method to get better is to go to more tournaments, that’s not an art, that is no pedagogy. There have to be some guiding principles. Rhetorical debating looks to the audience for that, which all tournament debate has functionally eliminated due to the demands of the tournament structure. The tournament demands elimination rounds Sunday morning at 8AM. Audiences are not considered important to the break. Being good at a tournament debate means you have to warp what you are saying to fit the norms of “the activity” or “the community.” This has much more in common with something like Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible and much less in common with the discourse associated people might have about what candidate is best to support in the upcoming primary election. There is little connection between The Activity and everyday life, just like the connection between NFL games and exercise.
The Activity is a word of rhetorical convenience; it does all the work for you. When a tournament-debater reads this, they infuse it with all elements of attending a
sportified weekend competition, including the interpersonal. All the friends they made and emotional moments are there too – which is why many people get pretty angry with me when responding to my criticisms of the one-modality debate pedagogy of the contemporary United States: “You prepare for a tournament, you go to a tournament, ???, you learn how to critically think.”
The Activity really does fit nicely. You imagine an automaton moving forward without aim, under its own power, lurching and continuing to move wihtout an aim or objective. It exists and preserves itself through acting.