Dartmouth

252818949.doc 10/13/14

1
File Title

Going for the K Olney

What K to read?
Depends on the aff
- big stick
- critique-ish
- policy affs that remove some of their impacts
Depends on your familiarity
Depends on which ones are good
- the trend in the past few years has been to assume that innovative = good. Thats a bad trend
Depends on what you need your K to do
- if you need a generic option available for a wide range of debaters as a fall back (new affs, unexpected
twists and turns), make it big and generally applicable (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Cap)
- if you have a specific aff you want to go for a K against, make it more specific and well-tailored

Before you get to the debate

Lots of research
- familiarity with the terms and ideas. Such that if the 2AC reads a card youll be able to sort out what it
means, not just what the tag says. Until you can do this with ease, youre going to have some serious
problems.
- capacity to EXPLAIN THE ARGUMENT to a non-debater. I cannot overstate how important this is
- a strong sense of what the genuinely good aff answers are. You need to be honest about where the argument
is weakest.
- lots of good cards. Topic specific ones, especially. Just because its a K doesnt mean you have license to
be lazy
- get to know various judges. Ks are sometimes simply non-starters with a lot of people. You need to be
aware of this. For others, Ks are okay but only certain types or styles.
Lots of thinking
- consider how to deploy the argument. What circumstances will require new evidence in the 2NC, how will
you explain the alternative, what the impact is, what tricks are there
- think about how to make the argument function against specific affs. Asserted case turns are the K
debaters best friend
- Examples. Draw from history. Be able to explain simple things that the aff fails to resolve

Writing the 1NC whats necessary?

- Links, obviously. But this can be a little more complex. What counts as a link will be a bit different depending
on how you imagine the alternative. Is it sufficient to win that the language of the 1AC is bad? Do you need to
win that the plan, if implemented, would be bad?
- Impacts. Most important thing here is to sort out the level at which the impact is meant to take place. A
couple options that you can mix and match
* Root cause, serial policy failure, inevitability, etc. Useful because it troubles the ability for the aff to
generate offense off of their action. Often deployed as something like a d-rule (c.f. bad cap debates), but
this is kind of silly. If all youve got is that the system in which they operate is terminally screwed then you
havent got a whole lot
* Value to life. This is a bad argument as its often employed. Many times people imply that participation in
some system of thought literally erases the value of peoples lives. When they say no value to life in their
framework they act like this means life would be valueless if the aff were done.
Framed more usefully, this is a criticism of the way the aff relies on thinking about impacts. Its an
epistemological claim about how its possible to experience value in the first place.
In short, this is a way of saying that the things the aff claims to value are not actually achievable while
conceptualizing the world the way they do.
* External impacts. These are tricky. Obviously you want them, but its also where you run into the most
danger. See, for example, the Foucault K. People often read this as a you cause biopower, biopower causes
genocide which is actually pretty incoherent.

Dartmouth
252818949.doc 10/13/14

2
File Title

- The alternative. This is where it gets tricky.

1. The current trend in debate is to obsess over the details of the alternative: its text, precisely how it relates to the
plan, the parsing out and dissection of the meaning of the words on the paper. There is a kernel of significance in all
of this, but it often distracts from the real focus: what is the ARGUMENT?
The alternative is notand should not bea thing that is voted for. Its not a material object. Its a way of
approaching a question. Dont think of the debate as alt v. plan. Think of it as policy analysis v. critical
inquiry. Or as problem-solving theory v. critical theory. Or as objective fact v. perspectival experience. The
alt is not an alt to the plan. Its an alt to the affs claim that the judge ought to value the imagination of
security, or of governmental action. Its an alternative way of thinking politics.
2. What does this mean in practical terms?
- If youre having a debate about whether the alt solves, youre already losing. The aff wants more than
anything to debate practicalities, and to insist on a judgment of the world where certain objective realities
pertain and are acted upon. Your job is to trouble that sense. If youre trying to solve within their way of
thinking, youre probably going to come out behind.
- The alternative = the framework. You win the debate because you win an argument about epistemology
or ontology. In less esoteric terms, you win because the stuff the other team said isnt valid knowledge, or
because it is meaningless. In either case, winning the alt means winning that their way of approaching the
world is fundamentally bankrupt.
- This doesnt mean you should ignore the debate about the alt. Far from it. The alt is the most important
part. It just means you need to re-think what the alt is doing for you. The goal should rarely be to claim that
some alternative way of thinking or doing politics somehow resolves a foundational problem of discourse of
meaning. Rather, you want to argue that when posed with such a foundational problem, the neg offers better
tools for coming to terms with the limits of possibility. When you try to pretend that your alt SOLVES, you
often end up linking as much (or more) than the aff.
- To summarize: dont oversell your alt. You need to win that its a good way of thinking about things.
But youre not going to win that the alt fixes security. The problem with security is our belief that we can fix
it.
3. Aff inclusivity?
This gets a bad rap, but you need to be able to distinguish various flavors:
- The whole way = floating PIC or AIK
- A more modest version = thats not a relevant question
Most Ks would probably approve of the aff if the ONLY choice was between it and the status quo. The point of the
K is to challenge the idea that decisions ought to be made which take such a framing for granted. If your K isnt a K
of the plan, you need to recognize that to some extent or another youre reading a floating PIC, however you want to
frame it.
For the 1NC, its almost never in your interest to frame your K as attempting to co-opt the plan. You can disguise
this a bit with language like different question or prior question. Or you can reference the role that discourse
plays in locking a seemingly benign policy into a broader context of biopolitics. Or you can read evidence that
emphasizes the problematic way that most policy debate imagines argument and reality to interact. i.e. reps
key

The block
2NC overview
1. Should you have one?
Maybe. Im generally pretty strongly against overviews, but they do sometimes have their utility. The big question
is whether you have any meta-level information that its important for the judge to know. If its a complicated
argument, it might help to give a summary. If there is an important framing argument that neutralizes a major
portion of the affs answers. Etc.
2. If you do have one, should you read cards in it?
No, except in very rare circumstances. If the card was so important, read it in the 1NC. If its important because of
something the 2AC said, then read it where it responds to that problem.
3. If it doesnt have cards in it then what SHOULD be there?

Dartmouth
252818949.doc 10/13/14

3
File Title

You should anticipate what is likely to be difficult or confusing about your argument and make it clear. Providing
examples or analogies can be helpful. More than anything else, give the judge a short, clear thesis statement:
something to hang their hat on. If your overview is more than 20 seconds, its probably too long.
2NC checklist
1. Links
- More is not always better.
- Comb through the 1AC for examples of problematic language, or for demonstrations of your link claims.
You sound much better when you can point to a couple very specific places in the 1AC rather than making
vague references to the aff.
2. Examples/analogies. These are crucial for the block. This is the time where the argument transitions from a
bunch of French mumbo-jumbo into a coherent position that is going to persuade the judge.
3. Turns the case arguments that are more sophisticated than root cause. Specificity is important here. Read case
turns. If you dont have the time to actually read the arguments, at least point out that they exist.
4. Dont neglect the internal link. People are often obsessed with the link (plan = disciplinary) and the impact
(biopower = genocide), but invest MUCH less time in the equally important internal link (the way in which theyre
disciplinary is correspondent with the ways in which biopower tends to be problematic). This is more difficult, but is
where many K debates are won and lost.
The aff rarely wins on the perm completely resolving the LINK, but they often win that the perm ensures that
the extent to which they link is insufficient to trigger the genuinely bad impacts associated with the broader
problem. This is an INTERNAL LINK problem for the neg.
5. This is negative evidence. It may or may not be. But honestly, about 75% of cards read in any K debate
could be spun for either side. Be the one winning the spin war. Dont over-do it, but a few well placed this is neg
evidence! arguments can go a long way.
6. Thats not our Zizek. One of the most annoying debate trends of all time, but theres still a kernel of truth here.
The never-ending run from staking out a position is aggravating and not likely to win you friends or ballots. But
being capable of identifying what your ARGUMENT is (not just the author who is associated with it) will help
you to distinguish their generic responses from your specific position.
The perm
1. Make your theory arguments, but make them quick and get on with it. You are not going to win that the perm is
severance unless you have already won your argument about the value of the alternative. Otherwise, the severance
argument begs the question that it is trying to prove.
2. Evidence is important here. One of the few must read cards parts of the block is the perm.
3. Explanation is even MORE important. The best cards in the world wont do you much good unless your giving
the judge a framework in which to read them. See above: 75% of K cards can go aff or neg if you give them the
right perspective.
4. Perms are defined by the ARGUMENTS they make, not by the labels attached to them
- If the aff says that the general thesis of the K is not inconsistent with the aff, that is a perm.
- If the aff says that the aff is a prerequisite to the K, thats a perm.
- If the aff says that reading their 1AC in light of the criticism gives you a reason to prefer the plan, thats a
perm.
- If the aff says perm, do both, thats a perm.
If the aff says perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative they do not understand what you
are talking about.
WHAT non-competitive parts? WTF are they even talking about? As long as you are clear that the
alternative is not a fiated thing but instead is an alternative way of dealing with the problem of, for example,
security this is a meaningless phrase.

Dartmouth
252818949.doc 10/13/14

4
File Title

If the aff says perm: double bind. If the alt is strong enough to overcome the status quo, then its enough to
overcome any link to the aff. If the alt cant overcome the link to the aff, it cant solve the status quo either they do
not understand what you are talking about.
Because you are smart and are not claiming that your alt overcomes the status quo there IS no double bind.
The point of all of this is to say that if you can prove there is something meaningfully bad about the aff, then you
should win. If your only reason the aff is bad is that its not your awesome alternative, you should probably lose.
Which is to say: keep the K debate focused on the links and internal links, not on the alternative. Or, at least,
focus on the alternative only as a vehicle for EXPLAINING the links and internal links. The alt should be made
clear through the way that you criticize something; it shouldnt be a thing in and of itself.
If youre doing everything right on the alternative/framework question, the permutation will usually resolve
itself. Most commonly because whatever net benefit they think they have to the perm will still beg the
question of the link.
For example: the perm against the security K is likely to rely on a picture of politics where necessity drives
us to evaluate the consequences of securitized acts, even while we recognize the nature of their construction.
A well developed neg position will simply argue that this net benefit continues to rely on a framing of
valuation in which insecurity reigns as the terminal impact claim.
Theory
1. Dont get too bogged down here. The biggest threat from theory arguments is that you get sucked into the vortex
and waste a bunch of time
2. Be more wary of this if youre on the extreme edge of the floating PIC spectrum.
3. Be aware of your judges. This is repetitive with the advice above, but deserves special emphasis here. Some are
going to be way more forgiving than others about things like no text to the alt.
4. Framework. See above in the alternative section for the 1NC. Some specific comments:
- You will beat framework arguments based on the K-specific evidence you have about the necessity of
considering the stuff you want to talk about. Most of the time, the framework debate begs the question of
whether the K is true in the first place.
- You need to do a better job of defending yourself against the ground/predictability based arguments the aff
will make. Most of these debates end up as two ships passing in the night
- Youll only really get into trouble here if you try to make super-aggressive claims about what the aff is not
allowed to do. If the premise of your argument is that the aff doesnt get to say that the plan or the discursive
choices or the idea of policy-making is good, people are going to be skeptical. If you say that they can
clearly weigh their aff against your arg, most people will let you quickly get on with things.
Impacts
See above. If you are doing the other stuff right, this should come naturally. Debate mostly about the link and
internal link, and youll clarify why they cause the impact. Use your devaluation, terminal policy failure, etc.
arguments to play defense against their claim that the impact to the aff matters. But mostly give the judge a reason
to think that choosing to think about things in a policy framework is bankrupt and a valueless way of evaluating the
arguments.

The 2NR
I actually have very little to say about this: the 2NR just needs to execute the ideas above. Dont overload yourself.
If your 2NC was well-constructed, you wont need to waste a ton of time pontificating. Your impulse will be to
spend a big chunk of time at the top talking pretty, but its a much better investment to put the relevant stuff where it
fits on the flow.
You actually need to do very little:
- make sure your alternative/framework is clear and the judge comprehends how it functions in terms of their
primary offense, and the perm
- establish a link, and provide examples of how this makes sense
- prove the internal link makes sense and how it relates to the impact
- make a genuine assessment of what their good offense is, and what you need to do to deal with it.