By Jay Namdhari, Andrew Lee, and Jason Luo
Kritiks are arguments that fundamentally criticize certain assumptions/worldviews of the resolution or your opponents, rather than the arguments they make. For example, if somebody runs a contention that advocates for improving the economy, one could argue that their contention is based on the assumption that capitalism, which is the system our economy functions under, is a good thing for people, which they then argue to be false (the infamous Capitalism Kritik).

Oftentimes but not always based upon Critical Theory, Ks are incredibly varied since there are so many different authors and types of literature (High Theory, Identity Politics, performance, k-affs, and “stock K’s”). Almost every K can be applied to nearly every topic, although it does vary. However, at the end of the day, a K is an argument like any other (most similar to a disad) and it’s important to remember that when dealing with them. There are basically no differences between the structure of these different types of kritiks, but it’s good to categorize them so you know what you’re dealing with and how to respond accordingly. 

Parts of a Kritik

Framing (Role Of The Ballot and Role Of The Judge)

Framing functions the same as regular framework - it tells the judge to evaluate the round through a certain method. 

​This is often referred to in debate as “Methods debate” and include the role of the ballot claims and role of the judge claims.

Many times, the Role of the Ballot or Role of the Judge will be justified by the impact to the K. Other times, the ROB/ROJ will function as an independent, philosophically justified framework.

There isn’t really a difference between the ROB and ROJ - some teams will make arguments for why the ROB precludes the ROJ or vice versa, but this debate doesn’t come up very frequently.

​Link

This is just how a link works in PF. The link just links the kritik into something in the round. Links can be into something the other team said (or neglected to say, called a link of omission), an underlying idea in the literature they read, and a lot more. Pretty much any way that teams can communicate an idea makes them susceptible to Ks read against the underlying assumptions their idea is grounded upon. Using the Cap K as an example, a possible link could be that the affirmative reads an argument that necessitate capitalism being good like a generic Econ scenario.

Impact

The impact is pretty similar to regular case impacts. Using the Cap K as an example, common impacts are environmental harm, extinction, and war. On other Ks, impacts are always pretty specific to fit under their framing arguments.

​K impacts are sometimes considered Pre-fiat, or occurring in real life. For example, by making militaristic rhetoric (militarism K), a team encourages militaristic, interventionist, and aggressive policies in real life which cause a lot of suffering.

Alternative (Alt)

The alt is the alternative that the neg takes against the aff. A simple way to conceptualize alts is like a counterplan except it aims to solve for the harms of the Kritik specifically as an alternative to the aff. For example, common alts for capitalism include socialism and rejection. Rejection (reject the aff) is a fairly common alt, so be sure to familiarize yourself with it. 

Alternatives should aim to solve the impact to the Kritik. For example, if the Kritik is about capitalism and the impact is the extinction by warming, an alternative could be to engage in communist organizing, which attempts to solve the impact. However, this can and should be contested, as many alternatives in PF are oversimplified and do not solve for the impacts of the K. For example, you could argue that communist organizing is infeasible and will eventually lead to state co-option.

Many times, the alternative is highly vague. For example, a common alternative read for Deleuze, a high theory author, is “becoming animal.” You can question the team reading the K on just what the alternative means or actually does. Frequently, teams who are less familiar with Kritiks will not be able to coherently answer a simple question of “so, what does the alternative look like if we were to actually do it?”. If they can’t describe the world to embrace, analytics can probably take it out easily.

Types of Kritiks

Stock Kritiks:
  • These are K’s that are simple to understand and commonly read. It’s important to be able to at least answer these kritiks.
    • Capitalism: Capitalism is bad.
    • Anthropocentrism: The idea that human beings are the only moral actor is bad.
    • Security: Securitization or the process of securing the world justifies imperialism which is bad.
    • Word PIKs: Short for Plan Inclusive Kritik, a word PIK boils down to claiming that the opponent said a word that was bad (any sort of rhetoric that excludes).
  • Stock Ks are commonly used to respond to other Ks. People mainly read the Cap K against other Ks, which initiates K v K debate.


High Theory
  • High theory is the LD Jargon term for anything that’s really complex, postmodern, post-structuralist, etc.
  • Teams that read these arguments will often spend a long time, sometimes their entire debate careers, just learning to read, understand, and win with ONE kritik successfully because the philosophical literature behind the arguments is extremely complex.
  • Some examples of this include Baudrillard, Deleuze, and Psychoanalysis.
  • There are only a handful of PF teams that understand these arguments, much less make them. It’s always useful but probably not necessary to get a surface level understanding of these arguments.

Identity Politics:
  • This is a type of argument that has the potential to be common in PF in the future.
  • These arguments are often very top-heavy with framing arguments about the survival strategies of specific identity groups (queer people, Black people, etc.)
  • Some categories of these arguments can be read by anyone, but there are reasons for why people that don’t identify with the identity category shouldn’t be making certain arguments (mostly for pessimistic arguments like afropessimism, queer pessimism, disability pessimism, etc.)

​K-Affs/Non-T Kritiks/ Performance
  • These are kritiks where there is no topical link or criticism of the opponent’s mindset. Thus, they can be read anywhere.
  • Instead, they are typically identity politics arguments that have performances, narratives, poems and more that creates solvency or argue that giving them the ballot creates survival and resistance against the oppression of a certain group.
  • These Ks are usually structured differently from a normal K, consisting of just a framework/methodology of how performance is a good thing or topicality is not necessary and then an impact that voting for them causes.
  • Typically, teams respond to these with reasons why topicality is good or frameworks that require engagement with the resolution.

Responding to Kritiks

Answering kritiks is in a lot of ways similar to answering a case argument; you still make no link, no impact, link turns, impact turns (although you shouldn’t impact turn most Ks since you would be reading arguments like “sexism is good!” which is morally abhorrent), etc. Honestly, the best way to conceptualize a Kritik is a Disad with a Counterplan glued on the end.

THE FRAMEWORK/METHOD DEBATE:
  • This is the most important way in which you can win the debate. It’s also in most cases the best because just like framework in case debate, it controls how the judge evaluates offense.
  • Typically you should read a counter role of the ballot argument to evaluate the best post-fiat policy option (Barma et. al 06 or any other “policymaking good” argument). This gets rid of all their weighing on the pre-fiat level of the debate and pins the round to the aff vs the alternative making the round much clearer for the judge as it puts your case in a more strategic position against the Kritik. This is important against lots of kritiks that have very vague alternatives or bad ones like “Be more complex” or “deconstruct threats” which can be easily beaten by a well-written contention/disad.
  • Thinking about it from a PF perspective, why are reasons why debating substance or pretending to be a policy maker may be good things? What benefits are lost when we focus on only the K debate?

There are several responses to Kritiks
  1. T-Framework (read against K affs that don’t defend state action or the resolution): These are topicality arguments that are used to essentially state that the affirmative must defend the resolution, defend a post-fiat policy option, etc.
    1. Most K aff teams will respond with “We meet,” impact turns to topicality, creative counterinterps, etc. Be prepared for T debates and those weird counter-interps. 
  2. Perm: These are arguments that you can do both the alternative and the AFF. The format for making these arguments is to state the perm (perm do both, perm do the aff and then the alt, perm do the aff with the mindset of the alt, etc.) and then state the advantages of doing both and explain why there isn’t mutual exclusivity (why you can do both and the alt can still occur along with the aff) or why the perm shields the link to the disad (the combination of the aff and the alt makes the links go away somehow.)
    1. One paradigm issue is whether perms are tests of competition or independent advocacy.
      1. The common consensus is that they are tests of competition which means that you can kick out of them while there is offense on them.
    2. Ask for the status of the alt ALWAYS.
      1. They will say condo, unconditional, dispositional
        1. Condo  = Conditional (this means they can drop it and all turns on it at any time which is something that you can read theory against, especially in PF when speech times are so short)
        2. Unconditional == They cannot kick the K.
        3. Dispositional - the most complex “condition,” and means that the team reading the K can kick the alternative only under a certain condition. For example, teams could say “dispositional - if you read turns against the K, I won’t kick it.”
      2. If they don’t specify, feel free to read theory saying that they must specify the status of their alt. Be ready to contest their K over Theory claims. 
  3. Impact Turns:
    1. Same thing as impact turns to disads.
    2. Common against Cap K’s (capitalism is good as it promotes space exploration or stops climate change)
    3. Be careful. Just like how some normal PF impacts are not ok to turn (abuse, structural violence, racism), the same is true for Ks. 
  4. Link Turns:
    1. Same thing says that your arguments solve the impacts to the kritik. More similar to an internal link or turns case argument that is made when weighing in typical debates. If a Cap K has an environmental degradation impact, you can advocate for a practice that helps the environment and read a link turn. 
  5. Alt Fails/ alt bad
    1. This would be similar to a non-unique argument essentially saying that the alt can’t solve the issue that the K talks about. For example, rejection doesn’t solve capitalism because it leads to worse systems emerging or just leads to the reemergence of capitalism. 
  6. Don’t Defend the State
    1. This argument is an answer to kritiks that criticize the state or the use of the state. You say either that the state is good or that you’re not defending the state: Justifications:
      1. We are using the state as a point of logical basis, we are able to understand how the state functions under a model of debate in which we don’t abolish the state which enables us to use the state to fight back against the things you say are bad. We are using the state as a heuristic. Only a prior understanding of the power of policymaking can create resistance. (Zanotti 14)
      2. The state is inevitable. Getting rid of it just recreates it. It’s try or die for using the state. (Holcombe 05) ​

Sample Kritiks - Coming Soon

Use Verbatim to open these. Also, although these Ks are a helpful start, you should optimally write your own Ks using these as a guideline.