Now that I’ve written a bit about the ideal model of debate that should be taught and practiced, I thought I might criticize contemporary debate teaching and practice from the same perspective, that of the Lacanian discourses. Contemporary debate practices are the university discourse, or what Lacan would later call the discourse of fake science.
The model here has the subject present itself as knowledge (S2) and address the other as its desire (a). This could be thought of in a number of ways, most commonly presented by debate teams and so-called “debate coaches” as “You really need to know how to argue properly.” Another variation: “Debate is an intellectual activity.” A further one: “Debate is for intelligent and smart students.” There are of course a ton of ways to say it, but the general gist here is that debate is a system of knowledge that wants you to be a part of it. It can also be seen as creating a desire in the other for it, as it presents itself as a pure form of knowing.
This is related to a lot of fantasies about what it means to know and be intelligent such as: responding quickly to questions, being witty immediately after someone says something wrong, never looking up any information, so-called ‘thinking on your feet,’ and other such strange models of “being smart” that exist. Not all of these are bad, but it’s bad to think these are the signs of intelligence, not practices that situationally may or may not be what you want to invoke for a particular kind of engagement from your audience or interlocutor.
At a recent debate conference a friend told me that they “loved” teaching a particular format of debate. What a strange thing to say – except for it’s dead on for the university discourse. Format appears to be the mode by which the self-regulating set of knowledge of debate is distributed. If I am teaching rules for a format, I am teaching the knowledge of debate. There’s no ideology or judgement here; this is just how debating works. Any format presents itself exactly this way, hiding very well that there is a choice being made about who to serve. The ideology (S1) is concealed by the presentation of the extremely attractive knowledge about how to argue and win against anyone – a pure system of engagement that has no stake in the outcome would be the best way to show everyone that you are right and smart (not necessarily in that order).
The result of participation in the appearance of self-ordering rules for debate that promise the result of always producing a winner in any engagement is a subject wracked with uncertainty outside of this clear rule set. It could be said that instead of thinking of debate (S2) as concealing an ideology that does not follow the rules of debate; a master order, a politics, a deeper feeling of the true (S1), what debate really does is cover over that strict rules of human speech and discourse, aka reason or logic are really political moves and investments in the messiness of human communication, and that’s what is being hidden from the debate practitioner.
Of course they will never figure this out – it’s in the position of inaccessibility. They will always have a sort of cynical and uncertain view of public argument, wondering why people cannot “follow science,” or “accept the facts” as our contemporary discourse puts it. Worse yet, one is hesitant about expressing one’s views on things without a clear rule set, or agreement that a particular set of argumentative rules will be followed as they “should be” in debating. Debate represents an ideal of perfect self-organizing knowledge about what arguments are better than other arguments.
What is a bad argument? Debate can tell you, but it cannot convince you. Why is that? It is because the value of good or bad in argumentation is determined ideologically. This is not permitted to be discussed in current tournament debating pedagogy as it ruins the game. Adaptation to audience is not what debate is about. It is adaptation to an audience that believes with monastic devotion in the pure project of reason, that is, argument without human failings. Arguments should be good and accepted no matter who says them, when they say them, or how they say them.
The result of all this debate team, debate coaching, and tournament pedagogy is the production of people who understand what makes an argument good, but are unable to confidently enter the fray if the situation is not rule-based. They are uncertain, or “split” subjects, people who understand how the world should be and live in a different world. The narrative of justification of piecemeal action is the great benefit – they can justify the system of reasons to anyone, which is very different from persuading people to change their belief. Recognition is not feeling; there is intellectual adherence, then there is passion.
This is a similar problem we face in argumentation pedagogy in general with the fallacies where they can be recognized, yet have no purchase on rejecting arguments that “feel right.” People can pass a fallacy quiz with an A+, and then leave class to go happily vote for a fascist who offers nothing but ad hominems and post hocs, seasoned with begged questions. The reason? Because they are right. Ideology is behind any organization of argumentation and to teach it this way, keeping that in the position of inaccessibility only fuels job security for debate coaches – “look around, we need logical debate now more than ever!”
The solution is of course in my previous post, but there are two other discourses to consider from Seminar 23. I’ll post about those as potential solutions for debate pedagogy in the weeks to come.