Topic area and selection: the white man's burden [WDI]

[Alfred Snider]

John Meany will be teaching and mocking at the World Debate Institute this
summer. This will be, I believe, his 16th year on the faculty.

Join him and many others there. Still room.

http://debate.uvm.edu/wdi.html
---------------
Alfred C. Snider aka Tuna
Lawrence Professor of Forensics, University of Vermont
802-656-0097 office; 802-238-8345 mobile; 802-656-4275 fax
asnider at zoo.uvm.edu office; drtuna at earthlink.net home/mobile
http://debate.uvm.edu Debate Central website


> From: John Meany <jmeany at BENSON.MCKENNA.EDU>
> Reply-To: John Meany <jmeany at BENSON.MCKENNA.EDU>
> Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 00:22:30 -0700
> To: EDEBATE at LIST.UVM.EDU
> Subject: Topic area and selection: the white man's burden
>
> This is a call to dramatically alter the topic selection process. My
> suggestion: Eliminate the topic paper portion of the process. Substitute a
> generic topic area that satisfactorily summarizes, or perhaps permanently
> enshrines, the needs and expectations of the majority debate community
> (e.g., "the white man's burden"). Assemble a topic committee to identify a
> geographical area of the world for prospective slaughter/rescue (although
> this may also be accomplished in a less decentralized but not much more
> representative manner on the listserv. In the future, CEDA may want to
> consider a gps palm attachment for this task). Reproduce the form of
> previous topics. Select a single security-based resolution by fiat (ensuring
> that it is not illusory), eliminating the pointless exercise of voting.
>
> There are a number of obvious benefits, including saving considerable time
> and anguish re the topic paper and selection process. It also preserves the
> topic committee, albeit with fewer duties, so there will be a target for
> community wrath during the summer. It is evident that a clear majority in
> the debate community wants to debate foreign policy topics with the United
> States federal government as the acting agent. It is also clear that foreign
> policy is understood to mean security and conflict issues. (War is both hell
> and universal). It is pointless to make efforts to coerce the community to
> accept domestic or even near-domestic resolutions (the NDT topic on Western
> Hemisphere and the CEDA topic on Mexico were largely decried during and
> after the year of debating the respective resolutions: simply too close in
> proximity to the United States and the people of these regions were too
> inconvenient for modern debate---appropriately ethnic and, therefore,
> available for slaughter/rescue, but they perished too slowly and in smaller
> than permissible numbers). It is time to move on from the antagonisms of the
> existing selection method and give the people what they want?the opportunity
> to use other cultures and people as foils, pawns, victims, stooges, and
> monsters in a game of intrigue and potential bloodbath.
>
> Debate is a form of entertainment and an articulation of power, and, like
> many contemporary forms of commercial entertainment and political sites of
> power, e.g., film, television, extreme sports, video games, the policy
> arena, etc., participants _desire_ expressions and representations of
> violence and conflict. They court conflict; fetishize warfare; and
> appreciate the organization and aesthetic appeal of quick and clean
> extermination. There may, in fact, be a genocidal mentality associated with
> contemporary debate. (A subtle form of violence is even apparent in the
> topic process itself in the construction and selection of topics, the
> marginalization of difference, and the limits on expression from the routine
> repetition of topic forms and subjects, as well as the inevitable and
> predictable argument base). It is no coincidence that three of the four most
> immediate debate topics examined the suffering of object 'others', so
> distant in identity from the participants in the debate community. This
> suspension of intimate connection with ideas and people is comforting,
> avoiding, as it does, the humbling vulnerabilities and awkwardness of one's
> own identification, personal expression, and political action.
>
> The topic selection process is critical here in moving the participants in
> debates from the center stage to the periphery. In this sleight, the topic
> selection product formally displaces the subject agents of debates and
> fictionalizes the object 'other'. (This is explicitly noted in Josh Hoe's
> recent posting regarding the knowledge base of the topic committee and
> painfully obvious in repeated listserv references to "the literature" on the
> topic, as if such a thing could exist or that it would be controlled by the
> topic committee or topic paper authors. It is evident that there is no
> possibility of assimilating the knowledge and perspectives on the issues of
> a topic area on this or others topics, even if they could be reduced in
> scope by orders of magnitude. Of course, any reasonable person might also
> conclude that the task of 'knowing' the topic is a hopeless one, even after
> a year of examination of a topic area).
>
> In the examination of the violence and 'uncivilized' behaviors of other
> cultures, or the call for the noble enterprise of reform for the sake of the
> primitives, an uncritical optimism in one's own, or one's nation's, natural
> goodness is permitted. Bully. The topic process ought to be altered, and
> much of it eliminated, so that the debate community may follow on, as
> Kipling admonished, and "Take up the White Man's burden?
> Ye dare not stoop to less..."
> __________________________________________________________
>
> This commentary is not directed to the design and selection of any single
> resolution in any given year but to the unrelenting, technical sameness of
> the topic process. This was most recently illustrated in the suggestion for
> a field policy consultant for the topic committee. This is just more of the
> same. It is progress, only if one believes that progress is spinning in the
> same circle, only faster. Although Mike Clough's comments are valuable in
> the context of the existing method, I am not convinced that method is the
> best approach for inspired debate. The committee may use the expertise of
> Mike Clough but it does not need it. It needs an expression of difference.
> It _needs_ Dolores Huerta, Manning Marable, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda,
> etc...
>
> The topic process should create opportunities for new thinking and
> performances. The current process fails on its own terms (it rejects small,
> fair, and critical approaches to the topic area to reproduce topics and fix
> many of the established power relations in debate) and fails to produce
> diverse topics that might inspire, challenge, and encourage current and new
> participants.
>
> One aspect of the process that should not change?the many ironic posts on
> the listserv that offer thanks to members of the topic committee while
> simultaneously suggesting that their appointment and effort is thankless...I
> want to add my thanks to the members of the topic committee for their
> service (and, in so doing, _refuse_ to acknowledge that it is thankless),
> although, as my post suggests, I believe there are more fundamental problems
> with the process than the dutiful and diligent completion of their assigned
> task.
>
> John Meany
> Claremont Colleges
>